Talk:rent-seeking

Are subsidies especially significant in rent-seeking?
The current definition includes the phrase: "...especially by the use of subsidies." I don't believe this is correct (in the economics literature generally), and I don't see the subsidy sense represented in either of the two existing citations. Does anyone have support for the idea that rent-seeking is somehow more related to subsidies rather than, say, looking for legislated restrictions on competitors, or favorable laws that advantage one product, manufacturer or industry over others. If no support can be found, I may remove the subsidy phrase in a few weeks. N2e 13:49, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


 * We could use good citations for this term. I agree that subsidies are not essential to rent-seeking and with what you say above. Moreover subsidies aren't necessarily the result of rent-seeking behavior. It might be useful to have three examples of "rent"-type benefits at rent and some words that are examples of rent-seeking behavior at this entry, worked into the definition or into citations or usage examples. DCDuring TALK 14:14, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Not negative enough
I don't think this definition stresses enough that rent-seeking is used in a way to criticize the engaging parties and viewed negatively by the economists who use the term. The Wikipedia entry for it includes a point that rent-seekers do not create new wealth. That's what distinguishes this from other types of manipulation. Forbes says it "doesn't add any national value. It is coerced trade and benefits only one side...Rent-seeking never encourages productivity". Library of Economics and Liberty: "Even though I am seeking rents by asking for a raise, this is not what economists mean by 'rent seeking.' They use the term to describe people’s lobbying of government to give them special privileges." The India Times calls it an "unwarranted monetary gain...without giving anything in return". Investopedia notes "...without reciprocating any benefits to society through wealth creation". FiveThirtyEight describes it as "another way of saying 'gaming the system to make more money than you've earned.'" Opencooper (talk) 23:20, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It seems pretty negative to me. The citations make the point pretty well. DCDuring (talk) 02:40, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

RFV discussion: September–October 2021
Not the specialist economics sense, but the recently added one: "The effort to increase one's share of wealth without doing something productive or adding value." User:Amin's edit summary said that he was adding "the TRUE classical definition of the term, prior to neo-liberals appropriation. My source = WIKIPEDIA and Michael Hudson's book J is for Junk Economics: A guide to Reality in an Age of Deception."

OED has no such sense. Equinox ◑ 19:12, 1 September 2021 (UTC)


 * We do not acknowledge a notion of “TRUE” sense. We include all senses in which a term is used as long as the sources meet our inclusion criteria. --Lambiam 13:13, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

The first line in Wikipedia is ‘ Rent-seeking is the effort to increase one's share of existing wealth without creating new wealth.’ which seems consistent with the second sense in our entry and as someone said in the comments to the Wikipedia page if it’s interpreted as ‘seeking economic rent’ then that would include land rent as well as capital rent, so it could apply to people like exploitative landlords. Overlordnat1 (talk) 10:52, 2 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Per WT:ATTEST, Wikipedia carries no weight for attestation purposes. --Lambiam 13:07, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Having considered this a little more, I think that the challenged sense is really just another way to state (part of?) the other sense, minus the econ gloss. Equinox ◑ 16:49, 3 September 2021 (UTC)


 * I’d say the second sense is the more general but less technical sense. Prior to Anne Krueger creating the term with its modern meaning in 1976, it simply meant ‘seeking rent’. Logically speaking, it could of course still be used that way but it possibly isn’t very often in practice and this could be labelled as ‘chiefly historical’ or with a similar tag. See the following examples: ,, and many other more recent hits for ‘rent-seeking landlord’ which don’t have a full view available on GB. These ( and ) are borderline, referring to landlords manipulating governments but also seeking higher rents. Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:57, 5 September 2021 (UTC)


 * The notion that Ricardo coined or used the exact term ‘rent-seeking’ is dubious though and I’ve just tagged the claim on the WP article as ‘Citation needed’. Overlordnat1 (talk) 10:07, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

cited Kiwima (talk) 21:53, 9 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Excellent! I’ve just added 3 supporting quotes on the citations page too, so I doubt anyone could argue it’s not cited now. Overlordnat1 (talk) 01:14, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

RFV-passed Kiwima (talk) 22:20, 21 October 2021 (UTC)