Economic rent is typically defined by economists as payment for goods and services beyond the amount needed to bring the required factors of production into a production process and sustain supply.[1] A recipient of economic rent is a rentier.
Economic rent is different from other unearned and passive income, including contract rent. This distinction has important implications for public revenue and tax policy.[2] [3][4] As long as there is sufficient accounting profit, governments can collect natural economic rent on resources (such as land and minerals) for the purpose of public finance without risking the adverse effects caused by taxes on production or consumption. Alternatively, economic rent can be collected as royalties, or extraction fees in the case of minerals and oil and gas. Economic rent is closely related to producer surplus but is measured in input units rather than output units.
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According to Tollison (1982), economic rents are "excess returns" above "normal levels" that take place in competitive markets. More specifically, it is "a return in excess of the resource owner's opportunity cost".[5]
Henry George, best known for his proposal for a single tax on land, defined rent as "the part of the produce that accrues to the owners of land (or other natural capabilities) by virtue of ownership" and as "the share of wealth given to landowners because they have an exclusive right to the use of those natural capabilities."[6]
Classical factor rent is primarily concerned with the fee paid for the use of fixed (e.g. natural) resources. The classical definition is expressed as any excess payment above that required to induce or provide for production.
Neoclassical economics extends the concept of rent to include factors other than natural resource rents. But the labeling of this version of "rent" may be somewhat opportunistic or simply incorrect in that Vilfredo Pareto, the economist for whom this kind of rent was named, may or may not have proffered any conceptual formulation of rent.[9][10]
Some returns are associated with legally enforced monopolies like patents or copyrights. In addition, companies like Microsoft and Intel have important de facto monopolies that can be quite valuable. The American Medical Association has traditionally regulated the number of students each US medical school can graduate, and by restricting the supply of doctors has been accused of thus increasing the income of doctors. Some businesses like public utilities are by their very nature monopolies. George Stigler estimated the impact of monopoly rent on the US economy to be fairly low, but he specially excluded labor monopolies from his studies.
In political economy including physiocracy, classical economics, and other schools of economic thought excepting neoclassical economics, land is recognized as an inelastic factor of production. Rent is the distribution paid to freeholders for "allowing" production on the land they control.
"As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce. The wood of the forest, the grass of the field, and all the natural fruits of the earth, which, when land was in common, cost the labourer only the trouble of gathering them, come, even to him, to have an additional price fixed upon them. He must then pay for the licence to gather them; and must give up to the landlord a portion of what his labour either collects or produces. This portion, or, what comes to the same thing, the price of this portion, constitutes the rent of land ...."
David Ricardo is credited with the first clear and comprehensive analysis of differential land rent and the associated economic relationships (Law of Rent).
Johann Heinrich von Thünen was especially influential in developing the spatial analysis of rents, which highlighted the importance of centrality and transport. Simply put, it was density of population increasing the profitability of commerce and providing for the division and specialization of labor that commanded higher municipal rents. And the high rents determined that land in a central city would not be allocated to farming, but would be allocated instead to more profitable residential or commercial uses.
Observing that a tax on the unearned rent of land would not distort economic activities, Henry George proposed that publicly collected land rents (land value taxation) should be the primary (or only) source of public revenue; though he also advocated public ownership, taxation and regulation of natural monopolies and monopolies of scale that cannot be eliminated by deregulation.
The generalization of the concept of rent to include opportunity cost has served to highlight the role of political barriers in creating and privatizing rents. For example, a person seeking to become a member of a medieval guild makes a huge investment in training and education, which has limited potential application outside of that guild. In a competitive market, the wages of a member of the guild would be set where the expected net return on the investment in training would be just enough to justify making the investment. In a sense, the required investment is a natural barrier to entry, discouraging some would-be members from making the necessary investment in training to enter the competitive market for the services of the guild. This is a natural "free market" self-limiting control on the number of guild members and/or the cost of training necessitated by certification. Some of those who would have opted for a particular guild may well decide to choose a different guild or occupation.
However, a political restriction on the numbers of people entering into the competitive market for services of the guild has the effect of raising the return on investments in the guilds training, especially for those already practising, by creating an artificial scarcity of guild members. To the extent that a constraint on entrants to the medieval guild actually increases the returns to guild members as opposed to ensuring competence, then to that extent the practice of limiting entrants to the field is a rent seeking activity, and the excess return realized by the guild members is economic rent as defined.