THE MEASURABILITY OF BUDGET RELATED RENT-SEEKING

It has been suggested that the extent of rent seeking expenditures ari sing from attempts to influence budget allocations should be estimated by the absolute magnitude of the observed changes in allocation. Inst ead, we argue that it is the extent of the ex ante prospective changes that determine the level of rent-seeking, and that in the presence of countervailing activity these may be quite unrelated to the ex post o bserved values. We further argue that the traditional rent-seeking mod el of competition for a pre-specified rent is inappropriate in this co ntext.