Liberty Fund Books

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.

Charles K. Rowley is 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 is also General Director of the Locke Institute.

The entire series includes:

Volume 1: Virginia Political Economy
Volume 2: The Calculus of Consent
Volume 3: The Organization of Inquiry (November 2004)
Volume 4: The Economics of Politics (February 2005)
Volume 5: The Rent-Seeking Society (March 2005)
Volume 6: Bureaucracy (June 2005)
Volume 7: The Economics and Politics of Wealth Redistribution (July 2005)
Volume 8: The Social Dilemma: Of Autocracy, Revolution, Coup d'Etat, and War (December 2005)
Volume 9: Law and Economics (December 2005)
Volume 10: Economics without Frontiers (January 2006)

Reviews

In economic terms, “rent-seeking” refers to outlays by individuals and interest groups to lobby government for special privileges that ultimately reduce the wealth of society. This volume contains two monographs by Gordon Tullock analyzing this behavior and its consequences: Rent Seeking and Exchanges and Contracts. It also features selected chapters from The Economics of Special Privilege and Rent Seeking. Tullock teaches law and economics at George Mason University.

Reference & Research Book News
August 2005



The fifth volume of Liberty Fund’s The Selected Works of Gordon Tullock series, The Rent-Seeking Society is expertly edited by Charles K. Rowley (Duncan Black Professor of Economics, George Mason University) who also provides an informative introduction to this volume of selected papers by economist and academician Gordon Tullock which he wrote between 1954 and 2002. This collection has the specific focus of Tullock’s views on the integration of rent seeking (outlays by individuals and interest groups to secure economic rents and privileges through government) into a general public choice model of political markets, the cost of rent seeking to society, and the current status of the field. Of special note are two critically important monographs: “Rent Seeking” and “Exchanges and Contracts”, as well as definitive chapters drawn from Tullock’s “The Economics of Special Privilege and Rent Seeking”. This fifth volume, and all four of its predecessors, are core contributions to academic and professional library reference collections for Economic Studies.

Library Bookwatch
July 2005

Table of Contents

Introduction, by Charles K. Rowley


1. RENT SEEKING: AN OVERVIEW

Rent Seeking: The Problem of Definition 3

Rent Seeking 11


2. MORE ON EFFICIENT RENT SEEKING

Efficient Rent-Seeking Revisited 85

Back to the Bog 88

Another Part of the Swamp 93

Still Somewhat Muddy: A Comment 95


3.THE ENVIRONMENTS OF RENT SEEKING

Rent Seeking as a Negative-Sum Game 103

Industrial Organization and Rent Seeking in Dictatorships 122

Transitional Gains and Transfers 136

Rents and Rent-Seeking 148

Why Did the Industrial Revolution Occur in England? 160

Rent Seeking and Tax Reform 171

Rent-Seeking and the Law 184

Excise Taxation in the Rent-Seeking Society 196


4. THE COST OF RENT SEEKING

The Costs of Rent Seeking: A Metaphysical Problem 203

Rents, Ignorance, and Ideology 214

Efficient Rent Seeking, Diseconomies of Scale, Public Goods,

and Morality 231

Are Rents Fully Dissipated? 236

Where Is the Rectangle? 241

Which Rectangle? 253


5. EXCHANGES AND CONTRACTS 261


6. FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR RENT-SEEKING RESEARCH 295


INDEX 313