The last survey of the rent-seeking literature took place more than a decade ago. Since that time a great deal of new research has been published in a wide variety of journals, covering a wide variety of topics. The scope of that research is such that very few researchers will be familiar with more than a small part of contemporary research, and very few libraries will be able to provide access to the full breadth of that research. This two-volume collection provides an extensive overview of 40 years of rent-seeking research. The volumes include the foundational papers, many of which have not been in print for two decades. They include recent game-theoretic analyses of rent-seeking contests and also appUcations of the rent-seeking concepts and methodology to economic regulation, international trade policy, economic history, poUtical com­ petition, and other social phenomena. The new collection is more than twice as large as any previous collection and both updates and extends the earUer surveys. Volume I contains previously pubhshed research on the theory of rent-seeking contests, which is an important strand of contemporary game theory. Volume II contains previously published research that uses the theory of rent-seeking to an­ alyze a broad range of public policy and social science topics. The editors spent more than a year assembling possible papers and, although the selections fill two large volumes, many more papers could have been included.

Title is also available as part of a set: 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking (978-3-540-79188-1)

Forty Years of Research on Rent Seeking: An Overview.- Forty Years of Research on Rent Seeking: An Overview.- Regulation and Protection.- The Social Costs of Monopoly and Regulation.- The Social Costs of Monopoly Power.- Misleading Calculations of The Social Costs of Monopoly Power.- Declining Industries and Political-Support Protectionist Motives.- Domestic Politics, Foreign Interests, and International Trade Policy.- Protection for Sale.- Economic Development and Growth.- The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society.- Foreign aid and rent-seeking.- The political economy of coffee, dictatorship, and genocide.- Why Is Rent-Seeking So Costly to Growth?.- Political culture and economic decline.- Institutions and the Resource Curse.- The King Never Emigrates.- Immigration as a challenge to the Danish welfare state?.- Political and Legal Institutions.- Rent-seeking aspects of political advertising.- Rent extraction and rent creation in the economic theory of regulation.- Rigging the lobbying process: An application of the all-pay auction.- Caps on Political Lobbying.- Inverse Campaigning.- On the efficient organization of trials.- Legal expenditure as a rent-seeking game.- Rent-seeking through litigation: adversarial and inquisitorial systems compared.- Comparative Analysis Of Litigation Systems: An Auction-Theoretic Approach.- Institutions and history.- Rent Seeking, Noncompensated Transfers, and Laws of Succession.- A model of institutional formation within a rent seeking environment.- The 2002 Winter Olympics scandal: Rent-seeking and committees.- Mercantilism as a Rent-Seeking Society.- Efficient Transactors or Rent- Seeking Monopolists? The Rationale for Early Chartered Trading Companies.- The open constitution and its enemies: Competition, rent seeking, and the rise of the modern state.- Illegal Economic Activities and Purges in a Soviet-Type Economy: A Rent-Seeking Perspective.- Rent seeking and taxation in the Ancient Roman Empire.- The Firm.- "Hard" and "Soft" Budget Constraint.- Workers as Insurance: Anticipated Government Assistance and Factor Demand.- Rent Seeking and Rent Dissipation in State Enterprises.- Discouraging Rivals: Managerial Rent-Seeking and Economic Inefficiencies.- The Dark Side of Internal Capital Markets: Divisional Rent-Seeking and Inefficient Investment.- Allies as rivals: internal and external rent seeking.- Efficiency Wages Versus Insiders and Outsiders.- Monitoring rent-seeking managers: advantages of diffuse ownership.- Inside versus outside ownership: a political theory of the firm.- Societal Relations.- Efficient Status Seeking: Externalities, and the Evolution of Status Games.- A Signaling Explanation for Charity.- Competition for Sainthood and the Millennial Church.- Publishing as prostitution? - Choosing between one's own ideas and academic success.- Ideological conviction and persuasion in the rent-seeking society.- Political economy and political correctness.