Why has the macroeconomic impact of foreign aid seemingly been so poor? Is there a relationship between the widespread level of corruption and other types of rent-seeking activities and concessional assistance? To answer these questions we provide a simple game-theoretic rent-seeking model. The model has a number of implications. First, under certain circumstances, an increase in government rev...

In the wake of a judging controversy at the Winter 2002 Olympic games, the governing council of the International Skating Union scrapped its judging system, replacing it with a new system which uses scores from only some of the judges, selected randomly. This means that the composition of the awarding committee is unknown. I examine rent-seeking expenditures when the composition of the committe...

Firm Size, Economic Situation and Influence Activities This paper discusses the optimal firm size in the presence of influence activities, and the level of individual rent-seeking dependent on the economic situation of the firm. Since firm size has a discouraging effect on the level of individual rent-seeking but also a quantity effect as the number of rent-seekers increases, the interplay of b...

This article analyzes an asymmetric rent-seeking contest with free riding where valuation on the prize (rent) and effectiveness of rent-seeking effort may differ among agents and the victory of an agent may not exclude some agents other than the winner of the contest to consume the prize of the contest. After proving the unique existence of pure-strategy Nash equilibrium, this article examines ...