Congress and the Rent-seeking Society


Book Description

A controversial study of Congress and the shifting balance between amateur and career politicians




The Political Economy of Rent-Seeking


Book Description

It is now twenty years since the concept of rent-seeking was first devised by Gordon Tullock, though he was not responsible for coining the phrase itself. His initial insight has burgeoned over two decades into a major research program which has had an impact not only on public choice, but also on the related disciplines of economics, political science, and law and economics. The reach of the insight has proved to be universal, with relevance not just for the democracies, but also, and arguably more important, for all forms of autocracy, irrespective of ideological com plexion. It is not surprising, therefore, that this volume is the third edited publication dedicated specifically to scholarship into rent-seeking behavior. The theory of rent-seeking bridges normative and positive analyses of state action. In its normative dimension, rent-seeking scholarship has expanded, enlivened, in some respects turned on its head, the traditional welfare analyses of such features of modern economics as monopoly, externalities, public goods, and trade protection devices. In its positive dimension, rent-seeking contributions have provided an important analy tical perspective from which to understand and to predict the behavior of politicians, interest groups and bureaucrats, the media and the academy within the political market place. This bridge between normative and positive elements of analysis is invaluable in facilitating an understanding of and evaluating the costs of state activity within a consistent paradigm.




The Rent-seeking Society


Book Description

The fifth volume in The Selected Works of Gordon Tullock consists of six parts, each part expounding on a separate component of the field. Part 1, "Rent Seeking: An Overview," brings together two papers that focus on problems of defining rent-seeking behavior and outline the nature of the ongoing research program in a historical perspective. Part 2, "More on Efficient Rent Seeking," contains four contributions in which Tullock elaborates on his 1980 article on efficient rent seeking. Part 3, "The Environments of Rent Seeking," consists of eight papers that collectively display the breadth of the rent-seeking concept. Part 4, "The Cost of Rent Seeking," comprises seven papers that address several important issues about the cost of rent seeking to society as a whole. Part 5 is Tullock's short monograph Exchanges and Contracts, in which he develops a systematic theory of exchange in political markets. In Part 6, "Future Directions for Rent-Seeking Research," Tullock focuses on the importance of information in the political marketplace. This work has been carefully constructed to build on the inaugural volume in this collection and to ease students through the field in a clear and concise manner. Gordon Tullock is Professor Emeritus of Law at George Mason University, where he was Distinguished Research Fellow in the Center for Study of Public Choice and University Professor of Law and Economics. He also taught at the University of South Carolina, the University of Virginia, Rice University, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and the University of Arizona. In 1966 he founded the journal that became Public Choice and remained its editor until 1990. Charles K. Rowley was Duncan Black Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a Senior Fellow of the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy at George Mason University. He was also General Director of the Locke Institute.




Rents, Rent-Seeking and Economic Development


Book Description

The concepts of rents and rent-seeking are central to any discussion of the processes of economic development. Yet conventional models of rent-seeking are unable to explain how it can drive decades of rapid growth in some countries, and at other times be associated with spectacular economic crises. This book argues that the rent-seeking framework has to be radically extended by incorporating insights developed by political scientists, institutional economists and political economists if it is to explain the anomalous role played by rent-seeking in Asian countries. It includes detailed analysis of Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, the Indian sub-continent, Indonesia and South Korea. This new critical and multidisciplinary approach has important policy implications for the debates over institutional reform in developing countries. It brings together leading international scholars in economics and political science, and will be of great interest to readers in the social sciences and Asian studies in general.




Careers after Congress


Book Description

Citizens, journalists, and watchdog organizations claim that U.S. Congress members serve special interest groups in return for lucrative jobs in industry once they leave office—and that these legislators become lax in their final term of office as they are no longer compelled by elections to provide quality representation to citizens. This book investigates the veracity of these claims. The established consensus among scholars and citizens groups is that democracy suffers when U.S. Congress members prepare to leave office—that legislators are quick to satisfy pressure groups' requests in part because they anticipate being rewarded with financially compelling positions in those organizations once they leave office. But is this actually true? Focusing on 346 of the senators and representatives who left office during the 107th through 111th Congresses (January 2001 to January 2011), this book makes a counterintuitive argument: that job-seeking legislators provide stalwart service to citizens during their final term of office for fear of damaging their reputations and imperiling their post-Congressional career prospects. After an introductory chapter, author Matthew S. Dabros summarizes past research on political opportunism before discussing how nonelectoral constraints imposed by special interests (namely, diminished post-Congressional employment opportunities) actually encourage job-seeking legislators to provide quality representation to citizens even in their final term in office. The book also describes the nature and identifies the determinants of post-Congressional careers. The chapters use numerous contemporary examples and draw parallels to topics familiar to general readers to ensure that the book is highly accessible and interesting to nonspecialists.




Antitrust Basics


Book Description

This book anticipates virtually every antitrust issue you can expect to face, including: horizontal and vertical restraints; joint ventures; private treble damage actions; price fixing; and more.




The Captured Economy


Book Description

For years, America has been plagued by slow economic growth and increasing inequality. In The Captured Economy, Brink Lindsey and Steven M. Teles identify a common factor behind these twin ills: breakdowns in democratic governance that allow wealthy special interests to capture the policymaking process for their own benefit. They document the proliferation of regressive regulations that redistribute wealth and income up the economic scale while stifling entrepreneurship and innovation. They also detail the most important cases of regulatory barriers that have worked to shield the powerful from the rigors of competition, thereby inflating their incomes: subsidies for the financial sector's excessive risk taking, overprotection of copyrights and patents, favoritism toward incumbent businesses through occupational licensing schemes, and the NIMBY-led escalation of land use controls that drive up rents for everyone else. An original and counterintuitive interpretation of the forces driving inequality and stagnation, The Captured Economy will be necessary reading for anyone concerned about America's mounting economic problems and how to improve the social tensions they are sparking.




The World of Economics


Book Description

What are the central questions of economics and how do economists tackle them? This book aims to answer these questions in 100 essays, written by economists and selected from "The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics". It shows how economists deal with issues ranging from trade to taxation.




Rent-Seekers, Profits, Wages and Inequality


Book Description

Mihályi and Szelényi provide a timely contribution to contemporary debates about inequality of incomes and wealth, offering a careful examination of various sources of rent in contemporary societies, and considering several policy options to reduce inequality in order to preserve the meritocratic nature of liberal democracies. While Rent-Seekers, Profits, Wages and Inequality acknowledges the rapid and disturbing increase of incomes and wealth in the top 1 or 0.1%, it focuses on the increasing rent component of incomes and wealth in the top 20% as even more consequential. The attention to cutting-edge issues on inequality in macroeconomics, political science and sociology will appeal to social scientists interested in income distribution and wealth accumulation.




Government Failure


Book Description

When market forces fail us, what are we to do? Who will step in to protect the public interest? The government, right? Wrong. The romantic view of bureaucrats coming to the rescue confuses the true relationship between economics and politics. Politicians often cite "market failure" as justification for meddling with the economy, but a group of leading scholars show the shortcomings of this view. In Government Failure, these scholars explain the school of study known as "public choice," which uses the tools of economics to understand and evaluate government activity. Gordon Tullock, one of the founders of public choice, explains how government "cures" often cause more harm than good. Tullock provides an engaging overview of public choice and discusses how interest groups seek favors from government at enormous costs to society. Displaying the steely realism that has marked public choice, Tullock shows the political world as it is, rather than as it should be. Gordon Brady scrutinizes American public policy, looking closely at international trade, efforts at regulating technology, and environmental policy. At every turn Brady points out the ways in which interest groups have manipulated the government to advance their own agendas. Arthur Seldon, a seminal scholar in public choice, provides a comparative perspective from Great Britain. He examines how government interventions in the British economy have led to inefficiency and warns about the political centralization promised by the European Community. Government Failure heralds a new approach to the study of politics and public policy. This book enlightens readers with the basic concepts of public choice in an unusually accessible way to show the folly of excessive faith in the state.