Lobbying for Incentives

In economics, examples of rent seeking include:

lobbying the government for tax, spending or regulatory policies that benefit the lobbyists at the expense of taxpayers or consumers or some other rivals.

Lots of people and companies engage in rent seeking. A recent local example is Honeywell International.

Honeywell International Inc. spent nearly $1.1 million in the second quarter 2008 lobbying on aviation regulation, defense spending, energy-efficiency tax credits and other issues, according to a recent disclosure.

Perhaps this activity is related to Honeywell's involvement in ASU's solar panels I mentioned a while ago.