Protective farm labor quotas persist without any group collecting the rents.

Evidence

In theory, the quota on migrant farm labor from CEEC creates jobs for unemployed Germans representing 20 per cent of total seasonal farm labor demand. It would be reasonable to expect this group to have a vital interest in even more restrictive labor market protection and to be the real beneficiary of the rent generated by this policy. Instead, experience shows that the German labor administration initially had difficulties finding Germans who were willing and able to take on this work. Only after special training programs and additional monetary rewards were issued by the labor administration a few positions were filled by Germans. German farmers have frequently blamed policymakers for the resulting labor shortage. The lack of motivation for unemployed Germans to apply for jobs in agriculture indicates that rent seeking by this group is not a convincing explanation for the persistence of an inefficient agricultural policy (Hess, 2004). — Georg Schreyögg and Jörg Sydow, The Hidden Dynamics of Path Dependence, 990

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the rent-seeking and self-reinforcing-institution material elsewhere in this volume — the mechanism here is ideological discourse rather than material payoff.
• QUESTION: If no one is cashing the rent, what keeps the quota alive in the labor administration’s own procedures?