Rent Dissipation in Simple Tullock Contests

We investigate observed rent dissipation—the ratio of the total costs seeking to monetary value rent—in winner-take-all and share contests, where preferences are more general than usually assumed in literature. With concave valuation rent, we find that contests can exhibit over-dissipation if contested is below a threshold yet under-dissipation with large rents: nature implies contestants relatively effortful contesting small rents. Considering thus allows us reconcile Tullock paradox—where rent-seeking levels despite being sizeable—with rents experimental settings, arguably small.