Rent seeking as individual persuasion

Rent seeking is a core topic in the political economy of public policy, describing unearned benefits sought and assigned through the redistributive consequences of policy decisions. In an extensive literature, rents have been viewed as contestable and the context for the study of rent seeking has been contest theory. We reformulate rent seeking as involving one-on-one persuasion. Our reformulation extends the scope of rent seeking to personal quests at persuasion of a political decision maker and to circumstances such as students seeking an improved grade and attempts at persuasion for personal companionship. We retain the social costs that have motivated the study of rent seeking. In contrast to contest models, however, we include in the social cost of rent seeking the time and attention of the person at whom persuasion is directed and from whom benefit is sought.