Efficient rent-seeking in experiment

In a series of experiments we show that people learn to play the efficient outcome in an open-ended rent-seeking game. This result persists despite quite different experiment environments and settings, like different propensities of competition, group sizes etc., and is interpretable as a resolution of the so-called Tullock paradox which states that real-world rent-seeking expenditures are much lower than what the standard rent-seeking model predicts.

Vogt, Carsten, Joachim Weimann and Chun-Lei Yang (2002), Efficient rent-seeking in experiment, Public Choice 110 , 67-78