On 11/3/06, paul phillips <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Jim, I have always preferred the term 'power rents' to refer to all those returns to market power including returns to monopoly/oligopoly whether the power is conveyed by legal fiat (eg patents/copywrites, intellectual property rights, etc.) or by 'market processes' such as branding, mergers and aquisitions, predatory pricing driving competition out of business, or by 'natural' monopoly conveyed by ownership of a monopoly resource/talent either of the Pigou type or 'talent rents' received by people who possess non-produceable talents that are scarce -- the 'Gretsky rent' or the 'Tiger Woods' rent etc. The importance of this, to me, is to emphasize what is entirely missing in neoclassical economics (but not in institutional economics), the critical importance of power in the distribution of income.
Is the American ability to run an ever larger current account deficit without crisis a kind of power rent? -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
