Competition also puts an end to rent seeking and protection of traditional corporate advantages.

Some are inclined to fancy up the styling of the process by calling it rent seeking.

Rent seeking occurs when a large firm uses its financial position to lobby politicians to create legislation that will increase its profits.

Those who feel that mercantilism amounted to rent seeking hold that it ended only when major power shifts occurred.

Such a deviation may result from government regulation, monopoly tariffs and import quotas, which in theory may give rise to rent seeking.

Some idea of symbolic purpose, of pleasure-seeking rather than rent seeking, of Doing Something Else, is essential to human existence.

The inhabitants of my universe are strongly motivated by self-interest but not exclusively so; political activity can be strongly rent seeking but is not inevitably so.

In reality, the most likely way such targets can be met is by increasing leverage – oh dear – or rent seeking, the economist’s euphemism for gouging the customer.

Corruption and rent seeking from interest groups will lead to weak property rights that prevent citizens and smaller businesses from the assurance that their property is safe under national law.

The government could improve the equilibrium by imposing subsidies and tariffs, but the hypothesis is that the government is unable to distinguish between good investment opportunities and rent seeking schemes.

The concept of rent seeking has been applied to Political corruption by bureaucrats who solicit and extract 'bribe' or 'rent' for applying their legal but discretionary authority for awarding legitimate or illegitimate benefits to clients.

The critique that mercantilism was a form of rent seeking has also seen criticism, as scholars such Jacob Viner in the 1930s pointed out that merchant mercantilists such as Mun understood that they would not gain by higher prices for English wares abroad.

Despite these nascent gains, corruption and burdensome bureaucracy continue to create barriers to market entry for new firms, permitting a few incumbents to maintain oligopolies in different sectors, and creating scope for arbitrary decisions and rent seeking on the part of public servants.

We do not want either prior approval mechanisms that would slow the pace of innovation or opportunities to manipulate regulations as an aid to rent seeking.