<P> A study by Laband and John Sophocleus in 1988 estimated that rent - seeking had decreased total income in the USA by 45 percent . Both Dougan and Tullock affirm the difficulty of finding the cost of rent - seeking . Rent - seekers of government - provided benefits will in turn spend up to that amount of benefit in order to gain those benefits, in the absence of, for example, the collective - action constraints highlighted by Olson . Similarly, taxpayers lobby for loopholes and will spend the value of those loopholes, again, to obtain those loopholes (again absent collective - action constraints). The total of wastes from rent - seeking is then the total amount from the government - provided benefits and instances of tax avoidance (valuing benefits and avoided taxes at zero). Dougan says that the "total rent - seeking costs equal the sum of aggregate current income plus the net deficit of the public sector ." </P> <P> Mark Gradstein writes about rent - seeking in relation to public goods provision, and says that public goods are determined by rent seeking or lobbying activities . But the question is whether private provision with free - riding incentives or public provision with rent - seeking incentives is more inefficient in its allocation . </P> <P> The economist Joseph Stiglitz has argued that rent - seeking contributes significantly to income inequality in the United States through lobbying for government policies that let the wealthy and powerful get income, not as a reward for creating wealth, but by grabbing a larger share of the wealth that would otherwise have been produced without their effort . Piketty, Saez, and Stantcheva have analyzed international economies and their changes in tax rates to conclude that much of income inequality is a result of rent - seeking among wealthy tax payers . </P>

What is the definition of economic rent quizlet