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Table of contents (36 chapters)
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Front Matter
About this book
There followed a long series of articles, mainly in Public Choice, in which various distinguished scholars proposed solutions to the paradox. The editor responded by finding fault with these solutions. In this case the editor was arguing against interest. He, like the referee for the JPE, believed that the market works, if not perfectly, at least very well. Nevertheless, the paradox resisted and persisted. It was like the paradox of the liar, and indeed in some cases did show exactly that paradox.
Eventually everyone, including the editor, grew tired of the matter and the discussion sort of wound down, although it could not be said that it was either solved or even abated. It also began to appear that it had a much larger scope than just competitive rent seeking. Any contest for wealth, privilege, or prestige in which the chances of winning were affected by the investment of the contestants would appear to be subject to the same problem. The sum of the investments in equilibrium might be much less than the prize or much more. It depended on the structure of the contest, but the range of structures seemed to include almost all economic competition. Clearly, from the standpoint of economics, this was a distressing conclusion. Perhaps the whole vast structure of economic analysis rested on faulty foundations.
Speaking frankly, neither of the editors thinks the situation is that desperate. We feel that there is a logical solution, even if we do not know what it is. The purpose of this volume is to attempt to get economists to turn to the problem and, hopefully, solve the paradox. We present here a substantial portion of the literature on the matter. We hope that the readers will be stimulated to think about the problem and, even more, we hope they will be able to solve it.
Editors and Affiliations
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Center for the Study of Public Choice, George Mason University, USA
Alan A. Lockard
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James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy, George Mason University, USA
Gordon Tullock
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Efficient Rent-Seeking
Book Subtitle: Chronicle of an Intellectual Quagmire
Editors: Alan A. Lockard, Gordon Tullock
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-5055-3
Publisher: Springer New York, NY
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eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive
Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media New York 2001
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-7923-7242-4Published: 31 January 2001
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-4419-4866-3Published: 17 September 2011
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4757-5055-3Published: 14 March 2013
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: X, 408
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: History of Economic Thought/Methodology, Economic Theory/Quantitative Economics/Mathematical Methods