Returns to effort in rent-seeking games

In the traditional formulation of rent-seeking games, increasing returns to effort are characterized by an exponent r>1. However, when the value of the rent is normalized to 1, the players’ effort levels a and b will typically be less than 1. Thus, when a1, the value of a r decreases as r increases, contradicting the interpretation of r>1 as representing increasing returns to effort. This apparent defect in the mathematization of the problem seems to suggest that a different interpretation of r is required whenever a