Individuals engaged in rent seeking accumulate sector specific human capital through learning-by-doing. If agents specialize, small reforms of the trade regime may fail to reduce the level of the rent-seeking activity. The size of the reform necessary to induce movement out of rent seeking is...

In the standard model of a rent-seeking contest, firms optimally employ resources in an attempt to win the contest and obtain the rent. Typically, it is assumed that these resources may be hired at any desired level at some fixed, exogenous per-unit cost. In many real-world rent-seeking...