Abstract
Rents are a perfectly good economic category and there is absolutely nothing in general against seeking them. If I were to invent and patent a cure for cancer and then became extremely wealthy by claiming rents on the patent, most people would regard me as a public benefactor. Nevertheless, “rent-seeking” is regarded as an unadulterated evil. The reason of course is the type of rent. The rents that attract rent-seeking waste resources in static models. In dynamic settings, their injury to society is even greater. The purpose of this essay is to clearly distinguish between what we may call “good rents” and “bad rent-seeking”.
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© 1988 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Tullock, G. (1988). Rents and Rent-Seeking. In: Rowley, C.K., Tollison, R.D., Tullock, G. (eds) The Political Economy of Rent-Seeking. Topics in Regulatory Economics and Policy, vol 1. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-1963-5_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-1963-5_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-5200-4
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