A fixed-share pool is a given amount of resources to be divided among a given number of claimants in which a claimant’s share of the pool is fixed exogenously. Consequently, rent seeking to increase one’s share of the pool is effectively eliminated. However, if claimants have sharing rights to more than one pool, rent seeking in the form of transferring resources from a pool where one has a small share to a pool where one has a large share will generally occur. A game-theoretic analysis of this type of rent seeking is discussed and then applied to a number of governmental settings.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Buchanan, James M.1963. The economics of earmarked taxes. Journal of Political Economy71:457-469.
2.
Buchanan, James M.1980. Rent seeking and profit seeking. In Toward a theory of the rent-seeking society, edited by J. M. Buchanan, R. D. Tollison, and G. Tullock, 3-15. College Station: Texas A&M University Press.
3.
Buchanan, James M.1983. Rent seeking, noncompensated transfers, and laws of succession. Journal of Law and Economics26:71-85.
4.
Buchanan, James M.1994. The political efficiency of general taxation. National Tax Journal46 (4): 401-410.
5.
Faith, Roger L., and Robert D. Tollison. 2001. Inheritance, equal division and rent seeking. Working paper, Department of Economics, Arizona State University.
6.
Hillman, Arye L., and John G. Riley. 1989. Politically contestable rents and transfers. Economics and Politics1:17-40.
7.
Mueller, Dennis. 1989. Public choice II. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
