Union rent-seeking is considered a tax on f irm returns f rom investments in innovative activity. We examine this proposition by considering the responses o f f irms in a 1985 survey on R&D and product innovation. Consistent with our model, we f ind that innovative activity is significantly less important for union than for similar nonunion firms. We conclude that innovative activity may be an ...

We introduce bids in a rent-seeking contest. Players compete for a prize. Apart from exerting lobbying efforts, they also submit a bid which is payable only if they win the prize. We show that our model has a unique Nash equilibrium in pure strategies, in which each active player submits the same bid, while the sum of all efforts equals that bid. In equilibrium there is underdissipation of rent.

Executive Summary. A hedonic regression model of rent values that is used to assess property values in Portland, Oregon, an urban area that has multi-centric rent gradients, is presented. The data consists of apartment rents, locations and other attributes, but a similar approach may be used to estimate the sale prices of homes or apartment buildings. Practitioners are encouraged to employ this...

The rent of shelter accounts for approximately a third of the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Using a new housing rent index (RRI) developed by Ambrose, Coulson, and Yoshida (2014), we modify the CPI and compute the Taylor rule for the period from 2000 to 2010. With this timely rent index, Taylor rule becomes more consistent with the Federal funds rate than the conventional calculations. However, t...

While numerous experiments demonstrate how pro-sociality can influence economic decision-making, evidence on explicitly anti-social economic behavior has thus far been limited. In this paper we investigate the importance of spite in experimental rent-seeking contests. Although, as we show, existing evidence of excessive rent-seeking is in theory compatible with fairness considerations, our soci...

The modern Theory of the Firm uses the concept of rent and makes implicit assumptions about equilibrium. An Austrian (Market Process) Theory of the Firm should have something to say about each of these. Two strategic perspectives are analyzed, the neoclassical microeconomic perspective (using the Ricardo-Marshall approach to rent) and the Market Process perspective (using the Fetter approach to...