When firms (conglomerates) are competing, not only for the present, with a given population of customers and a fixed set of commodities or service, but also for the future, in which products are constantly evolving, what will be their competitive strategies and what will be the emerging ecology...

I develop a model of rent seeking with informational foundations and an arbitrary number of rent seekers, and I compare the results with Tullock's (1980) classic model where the influence activities are "black-boxed." Given the microfoundations, the welfare consequences of rent seeking can be...