Rents Rent Seeking And Economic Development

The concepts of rents and rent-seeking are central to any discussion of the processes of economic development. Yet conventional models of rent-seeking are unable to explain how it can drive decades of rapid growth in some countries, and at other times be associated with spectacular economic crises. This book argues that the rent-seeking framework has to be radically extended by incorporating insights developed by political scientists, institutional economists and political economists if it is to explain the anomalous role played by rent-seeking in Asian countries. It includes detailed analysis of Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, the Indian sub-continent, Indonesia and South Korea. This new critical and multidisciplinary approach has important policy implications for the debates over institutional reform in developing countries. It brings together leading international scholars in economics and political science, and will be of great interest to readers in the social sciences and Asian studies in general.

Rent seeking continues to be a topic of much discussion and debate within the political economy. This new study challenges previous assumptions and sets out a new analysis of the dynamics of rent and rent seeking in development, using Vietnam as a case study. This book provides an alternative approach to the study of economic development and illuminates new perspectives in a contemporary context. It argues that not only has there been an incomplete understanding of Vietnam’s industrial development over the last three decades, but that neoclassical economics do not adequately address many of the issues endangering Vietnam’s development. A significant observation of the Vietnamese experience is the analytical view that rents can be developmental and growth enhancing if the configuration of rent management incentivizes industrial upgrade and conditions firm performance. Underlining the need to reexamine how economic actors and the state collaborate through formal and informal institutions, this study fills a gap in the scholarship of the political economy of rent and rent seeking and how rents might be used for developmental purposes.

This volume identifies rent-seeking behavior as a primary cause of poor economic performance in many places, particulary Africa. The book presents a detailed empirical study of rent-seeking within the civil service, parastatal sector, and business community in Tanzania. It quantifies and evaluates the rent-seeking behavior of more than 300 parastatal companies and the resulting impact on society. The conclusions on reform strategies are applicable to counties within and outside Africa.

The quest for benefit from existing wealth or by seeking privileged benefit through influence over policy is known as rent seeking. Much rent seeking activity involves government and political decisions and is therefore in the domain of political econo

This book compares models of low-rent and high-rent development to explain the divergent growth of regions and to query the continued prioritization of industrialization over agriculture and export services as the engine of economic prosperity.

It is now twenty years since the concept of rent-seeking was first devised by Gordon Tullock, though he was not responsible for coining the phrase itself. His initial insight has burgeoned over two decades into a major research program which has had an impact not only on public choice, but also on the related disciplines of economics, political science, and law and economics. The reach of the insight has proved to be universal, with relevance not just for the democracies, but also, and arguably more important, for all forms of autocracy, irrespective of ideological com plexion. It is not surprising, therefore, that this volume is the third edited publication dedicated specifically to scholarship into rent-seeking behavior. The theory of rent-seeking bridges normative and positive analyses of state action. In its normative dimension, rent-seeking scholarship has expanded, enlivened, in some respects turned on its head, the traditional welfare analyses of such features of modern economics as monopoly, externalities, public goods, and trade protection devices. In its positive dimension, rent-seeking contributions have provided an important analy tical perspective from which to understand and to predict the behavior of politicians, interest groups and bureaucrats, the media and the academy within the political market place. This bridge between normative and positive elements of analysis is invaluable in facilitating an understanding of and evaluating the costs of state activity within a consistent paradigm.

The state and its institutions are crucial for economic development: for better and for worse. This insight informs this important, up-to-date and authoritative survey of new trends in growth economics and the widely divergent economic performance of developing countries - for example, between Latin America and South-east Asia - which seemed to be similarly placed just a generation ago. The decisive role of the political dimension in economic growth seems clear but there are many challenges to be met in getting an analytical handle on the precise determinants and in testing empirically for this. This is the challenge taken up by the international team of contributors.

In China, rent seeking has been linked to the idea of the local developmental state in which rapid economic development is explained in terms of the promotion of village and township enterprises by local cadres who wants to maximize revenue. At the same time, the rent-seeking state is also seen as the root of corrupt practices and in the creation of a political market where state assets and authorities are diverted into private interests. Despite the prevalence of rent seeking practices in present day China, no systematic study of the phenomenon across different regions and economic sectors has yet been undertaken and as such what accounts for the occurrence of the phenomenon, what range of activities are related to rent seeking practices and, more importantly, how rent seeking shapes political and economic development are barely understood. Rent Seeking in China seeks to address these questions using case studies from across economics sectors including primary industry, strategic industry, heavy industry, and light industry. It will be invaluable reading for students and scholars of Chinese politics, comparative politics and Chinese economic and business management.