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Articles on rent seeking

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Aggregate demand is being hit by the concentration of income growth among the top earners and is now a drag on economic growth. Shutterstock

How rising inequality is stalling economies by crippling demand

News that Australian CEO pay has soared to a 17-year high at a time when ordinary workers’ wages are flatlining is ultimately bad news for economic growth and prosperity.
Give a man the means to borrow, so the argument goes, and he can work himself out of poverty. But do microfinances’ claims stand up? wk1003mike/Shutterstock

Does microfinance really alleviate poverty? The 34-billion-dollar question

Small loans from governments and philanthropists are often held up as a route out of poverty. But proper research into whether they work is thin on the ground.
Rather than an unfortunate but unavoidable side effect of economic advance, increased inequality that results from rent-seeking is arguably cancerous. Flickr/Gary Sauer-Thompson

This budget - like others before - will favour the rent-seekers

Our policy-makers know perfectly well how to reduce inequality and tackle political favouritism. The question is, will this federal budget even try?
The first incarnation of the now-gone mining tax focused on economic rent. Is targeting powerful rent seekers too hard? AAP/Kim Christian

How’s this for fundamental tax reform? Target the rentseekers

Tax is back in the spotlight with coalition MPs and the Australia Institute talking about getting rid of some of the exemptions to the GST. There has also been a lot of talk about whether or not corporate…
Has our use of economics language been a real driver of economic growth? Cau Napoli Collettivo Autorganizzato Universitario di Napoli/Flickr

Speak well of the bourgeois, and prosper

Do the words we use to speak of economic matters, matter? I believe they do, but not by the propagation of textbookish jargon. Rather, the main way they matter is in shaping public ethics. Economics has…

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