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The First U.S. Food Stamp Program: An Example of Rent Seeking and Avoiding
Author(s) -
DeLorme Charles D.,
Kamerschen David R.,
Redman David C.
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
american journal of economics and sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.199
H-Index - 38
eISSN - 1536-7150
pISSN - 0002-9246
DOI - 10.1111/j.1536-7150.1992.tb02726.x
Subject(s) - rent seeking , deadweight loss , economics , monopoly , food stamp program , social cost , position (finance) , food stamps , public economics , social welfare , promotion (chess) , government (linguistics) , welfare , microeconomics , market economy , finance , law , linguistics , philosophy , politics , political science
A bstract . Rent seeking involves the wasteful expenses incurred to secure, acquire, or maintain a monopoly position. Rent avoiding involves the expenditures undertaken to avoid the imposition of rent‐seeking costs. Each represents a social cost of Tullock rectangle loss in addition to the dead‐weight or Harberger triangle loss that combined to form the Harberger‐Tullock trapezoid social cost. The first Food Stamp Program in the United States came about through the rent‐seeking and/or rent‐avoiding efforts of farmers, grocers, bankers, and other economic agents and did not lead to the promotion of social welfare. The evidence of these self‐interested efforts was gleaned from articles in the New York Times and government documents. The first Food Stamp Program also fits the economic theory of regulation developed by Stigler, Jordan, Peltzman and others, and it involved imposed costs on economic agents as the program evolved.