The equivalence of rent-seeking outcomes for competitive-share and strategic groups Kyung Hwan Baik a , Bouwe R. Dijkstra b , Sanghack Lee c, * , Shi Young Lee d a Department of Economics, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul 110-745, South Korea b School of Economics, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom c School of Economics, Kookmin University, Seoul 136-702, South Korea d Department of International Trade, Chung Ang University, Ansung, Kyongki-do, South Korea Received 30 June 2005; received in revised form 13 October 2005; accepted 17 October 2005 Available online 1 December 2005 Abstract In competitive-share groups, groups of players compete for a rent and members of the winning group share the prize according to a weighted average of relative outlay and egalitarian shares. In strategic groups, group members compete individually for a rent and the winner keeps a part of the rent, and divides the rest among group members. In this note, we show that these two portrayals of rent seeking with groups are equivalent. D 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: D72; D74 Keywords: Rent-seeking contest; Competitive-share group; Strategic group; Equivalence in rent seeking 1. Introduction Following the seminal contributions of Tullock (1967, 1980), Krueger (1974), and Posner (1975), many scholars have examined contests in which players expend resources to win a rent. 1 Most papers in the literature focus on rent-seeking contests between individuals. However, several papers have studied collective rent seeking, i.e., contests among groups of players. 0176-2680/$ - see front matter D 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2005.10.004 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +82 2 910 4546; fax: +82 2 9104519. E-mail address: slee@kookmin.ac.kr (S. Lee). 1 For an overview of the literature, see Hillman (2003, chapter 6) and Mueller (2003, chapter 15). European Journal of Political Economy Vol. 22 (2006) 337–342 www.elsevier.com/locate/ejpe