To investigate whether rent‐seeking discourages productivity, we consider a third‐market model, in which a domestic firm and a foreign firm engage in both Research and Development (R&D) and output competition. We show that the relationship between rent‐seeking and productivity depends on two forces. On the one hand, rent‐seeking increases the marginal benefit of R&D and encourages productivity. On the other hand, a lower production cost due to R&D enables the government to extract the rent from the firm to a greater extent and discourages the productivity. Which force is dominant depends on the level of corruption or, as an alternative interpretation, the weight the government attaches to political contributions. Unlike the monotonic relationship proposed by the literature, we find a non‐monotonic relationship between rent‐seeking and productivity.

中文翻译：

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寻租，研发和生产力

为了研究寻租是否会阻碍生产率，我们考虑了第三市场模型，在该模型中，国内公司和外国公司都参与了研发（R＆D）和产出竞争。我们表明，寻租与生产率之间的关系取决于两种力量。一方面，寻租增加了研发的边际收益并促进了生产率。另一方面，由于研发而产生的较低的生产成本使政府能够更大程度地从企业中提取租金并降低了生产率。哪种力量占主导地位取决于腐败的程度，或者作为替代解释，取决于政府对政治贡献的重视程度。与文献中提出的单调关系不同，