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

Charles D. DeLorme, David R. Kamerschen and David C. Redman

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 1992, vol. 51, issue 4, 421-421

Abstract: 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.

Date: 1992
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1536-7150.1992.tb02726.x

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ajecsc:v:51:y:1992:i:4:p:421-421

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0002-9246

Access Statistics for this article

American Journal of Economics and Sociology is currently edited by Laurence S. Moss

More articles in American Journal of Economics and Sociology from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().