"There is no question that a well-defined 'Chicago School' of political economy has emerged, built largely around the work of George J. Stigler and his colleagues. Chicago Studies in Political Economy brings together the key works in this field, works that have been extremely influential among economists who study political processes. It is a collection of enormous value."—Roger G. Noll

The last survey of the rent-seeking literature took place more than a decade ago. Since that time a great deal of new research has been published in a wide variety of journals, covering a wide variety of topics. The scope of that research is such that very few researchers will be familiar with more than a small part of contemporary research, and very few libraries will be able to provide access to the full breadth of that research. This two-volume collection provides an extensive overview of 40 years of rent-seeking research. The volumes include the foundational papers, many of which have not been in print for two decades. They include recent game-theoretic analyses of rent-seeking contests and also appUcations of the rent-seeking concepts and methodology to economic regulation, international trade policy, economic history, poUtical com petition, and other social phenomena. The new collection is more than twice as large as any previous collection and both updates and extends the earUer surveys. Volume I contains previously pubhshed research on the theory of rent-seeking contests, which is an important strand of contemporary game theory. Volume II contains previously published research that uses the theory of rent-seeking to an alyze a broad range of public policy and social science topics. The editors spent more than a year assembling possible papers and, although the selections fill two large volumes, many more papers could have been included.

This collection brings together the classic papers on the economics of rent seeking. These papers date from Gordon Tullock's original 1967 paper which first put forth the idea that the pursuit of transfers was socially costly. Other classic papers by Anne Krueger and Richard Posner are included, as well as a series of more recent papers which trace the evolution of the literature on this important innovation in economic theory.