The First U.S. Food Stamp Program: An Example of Rent Seeking and Avoiding

Abstract . Rent seeking involves the wasteful expenses incurred to secure, acquire, or maintain a monopoly position. Rent avoiding involves the expenditures undertaken to avoid the imposition of rent-seeking costs. Each represents a social cost of Tullock rectangle loss in addition to the dead-weight or Harberger triangle loss that combined to form the Harberger-Tullock trapezoid social cost. The first Food Stamp Program in the United States came about through the rent-seeking and/or rent-avoiding efforts of farmers, grocers, bankers, and other economic agents and did not lead to the promotion of social welfare. The evidence of these self-interested efforts was gleaned from articles in the New York Times and government documents. The first Food Stamp Program also fits the economic theory of regulation developed by Stigler, Jordan, Peltzman and others, and it involved imposed costs on economic agents as the program evolved.     

The Money-Creation Model: An Alternative Pedagogy

A graphical and algebraic presentation of money creation is shown to complement the traditional T-account development.     

Ethics and the Internet Issues Associated with Qualitative Research

This paper examines the need for standards to resolve ethical conflicts related to qualitative, on-line research. Practitioners working in the area of qualitative research gauged the breadth and depth of this need. Those practitioners identified several key ethical issues associated with qualitative on-line research, and felt that there should be a common ethics code to cover issues related to Internet research. They also identified challenges associated with the profession's acceptance of a unified code. The paper concludes by offering guidance in developing and implementing such a code.