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.

Stephen Daniels and Joanne Martin have analyzed patterns in jury verdicts in a number of substantive legal areas, including medical malpractice, products liability, and punitive damages, against the background of the larger political and academic debate over tort reform. Civil Juries and the Politics of Reform brings together and summarizes the authors' extensive empirical research on civil jury verdicts in the context of that debate. Some commentators are arguing that there is a substantial gap between the image of juries and civil justice that is driving tort reform and what is known of the reality of the civil justice system. The authors use their discussion of juries not simply to help inform the policy debate but to analyze tort reform as a public policy issue for what it tells about the policy process itself.