We examine how inequality in the endowment of secure wealth, mediated through voluntary public good provision, affects rent-seeking within and between groups. We model a scenario where two communities, each internally differentiated into rich, intermediate and poor segments, contest one another...

We examine how inequality in the endowment of secure wealth, mediated through voluntary public communities, each internally differentiated into rich, intermediate and poor segments, contest one another for the division of some rent. Any rent accruing to a community is distributed internally...

Recent policy proposals have suggested taxing top incomes at very high rates on the grounds that some or all of the highest wage earners are engaged in socially unproductive or counterproductive activities, such as externality imposing speculation in the financial sector. To address this, we...