RENT SEEKING

This is a succinct but comprehensive account of the research programme in rent-seeking launched in 1967 by Gordon Tullock’s argument that the availability of monopoly rents through government encourages self-seeking individuals to waste economic resources in competitive bidding for those rents. Rent Seeking reviews each of the contributions for which Professor Tullock is famous, including the basic insight, the cost of transfers, competition for aid, the political market in rent-seeking, efficient rent-seeking, the transitional gains trap, and the cost of rent-seeking, and shows how each of these insights has triggered a burgeoning research literature. He skilfully draws out the dangerous implications of rent-seeking behaviour for private property rights. In characteristic fashion, he returns to his path-breaking work on the economic theory of constitutions in search of novel ways to secure the right to life, liberty and property through a reinforced constitutional republic. Both for the specialist scholar and for the new initiate, this is a great and instructive essay.