 Forty Years of Research on Rent Seeking: An OverviewRoger Congleton, Arye L. Hillman and Kai Konrad A chapter in 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 2, 2008, pp 1-42 from Springer Abstract: Abstract The quest for rents has always been part of human behavior. People have long fought and contended over possessions, rather than directing abilities and resources to productive activity. The great empires and conquests were the consequences of successful rent seeking. Resources were also expended in defending the rents that the empires provided. The unproductive use of resources to contest, rather than create wealth, also occurred within societies in attempts to replace incumbent rulers and in seeking the favor of rulers who dispensed rewards and indeed often determined life and death. Sacrifices made by early peoples to their deities were instances of rent seeking; valuable possessions were given up with the intent of seeking to influence assignment of other rewards. In contemporary times, rent seeking takes place within democratic institutions and also under conditions of autocracy that are akin to the circumstances of the earlier rent-dispensing despots. Incentives for rent seeking are present whenever decisions of others influence personal outcomes or more broadly when resources can be used to affect distributional outcomes. Date: 2008 There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-540-79247-5_1 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-79247-5_1 Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Springer Books from Springer |
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