40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1: Theory of Rent Seeking

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 appHcations 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 earlier surveys. Volume I contains previously published research on the theory of rent-seeking contests, which is an important strand of contemporary game theory. Volume II contains previously pubHshed 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.

The two-volume set 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking provides a new, extensive collection of significant academic research on rent seeking, from its beginning to the present. It includes a number of papers that have long been out of print and many other papers from journals that few libraries or scholars will own. Researchers in the field of rent seeking will find it useful to have this collection of texts as a reference manual. The introduction provides a thorough survey of the literature and summarizes the papers included in the two volumes.

The focus of Volume I is on conceptional and theoretical developments.