Rent Seeking and Corruption in Financial Markets Asim Ijaz Khwaja1 and Atif Mian2 1Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 2Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720; email:
[email protected] by Harvard University on 02/14/13. For personal use only. Annu. Rev. Econ. 2011.3:579-600. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org Annu. Rev. Econ. 2011. 3:579–600 Keywords First published online as a Review in Advance on agency issues, financial market design and regulation May 25, 2011 The Annual Review of Economics is online at Abstract economics.annualreviews.org We describe recent advances in the study of rent seeking and This article’s doi: corruption in financial markets. We outline three areas of inquiry: 10.1146/annurev-economics-061109-080310 (a) conceptualizing rent seeking, (b) identifying rent-provision Copyright © 2011 by Annual Reviews. channels and their general equilibrium impact, and (c) designing All rights reserved feasible remedial mechanisms. We provide suggestions for making JEL codes: G2, G3, G18, O16 further progress in these areas and review a variety of approaches 1941-1383/11/0904-0579$20.00 taken in the recent literature. 579 1. INTRODUCTION Financial markets are entrusted with the all-important task of intermediating capital to where it is most productive and maintaining a healthy balance between risk and reward. As a result, rent seeking, to the extent that it distorts this allocation, is deemed costly for an economy. This article draws on some of the recent literature on rent seeking in financial markets in order to present an analytical road map that we hope will be useful for researchers interested in this topic.