The concept of “rent-seeking” was developed by Gordon Tullock in his 1967 paper, “The Welfare Costs of Tariffs, Monopolies, and Theft.” But he never actually uses the phrase in the paper.
Rent-seeking remained an idea without a name until 1974, when Anne Krueger published “The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society” in the American Economic Review.
This and other fun facts are in Charles Rowley’s introduction to The Rent-Seeking Society, which is volume 5 of the Collected Works of Gordon Tullock.
Inertia Wins! 