Note on rent-seeking and committees using a proportionate-sharing rule

Abstract

The paper examines how the effort expended in pursuit of rents may be affected by having the rents awarded by either an individual or a committee, under differing allocation rules. Congleton (1984) found that rent-seeking efforts should be markedly lower when rents are awarded by committees rather than by a single administrator. This paper reexamines the proportionate-sharing rule, and finds that, depending on decision-making norms followed by committee members, allocation by committee may result in rent-seeking expenditures that are less than, equal to, or greater than those where rents are proportionately divided by a single administrator.