Politicians, governed versus non-governed interest groups and rent dissipation

Gil S. Epstein, Yosef Mealem

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Government intervention often gives rise to contests and the government can influence their outcome by choosing their type. We consider a contest with two interest groups: one that is governed by a central planner and one that is not. Rent dissipation is compared under two well-known contest success functions: the generalized logit and the all-pay auction. We also consider the case in which the government can limit the size of the non-governed interest group in order to determine the scope of rent dissipation, with the goal of either increasing the rent obtained by the government or reducing the wasted resources invested in the contest.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)133-149
Number of pages17
JournalTheory and Decision
Volume79
Issue number1
Early online date26 Jun 2014
DOIs
StatePublished - 25 Jul 2015

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2014, Springer Science+Business Media New York.

Funding

Financial support from the Adar Foundation of the Department of Economics of Bar-Ilan University is gratefully acknowledged. We are grateful to the referees for their constructive comments

FundersFunder number
Adar Foundation of the Department of Economics of Bar-Ilan University

    Keywords

    • All-pay auction
    • Central planner
    • Contest
    • Generalized logit contest success function
    • Rent dissipation

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Politicians, governed versus non-governed interest groups and rent dissipation'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this