Economic rent is any payment to an owner of a productive resource in excess of the minimum amount necessary to keep the resource in its current use. In capitalist economic systems, individuals and households control most RESOURCES and choose how to allocate those resources. To keep a resource (land, labor, or CAPITAL) in its current use, the resource owner will demand, as minimum payment, a price equal to what they could receive for the best alternative use of that resource (OPPORTUNITY COST). Economists distinguish between economic rent and quasi rents. Economic rent is the price paid to a productive resource that is perfectly inelastic in supply. Perfectly inelastic SUPPLY means there is a fixed quantity of the resource, and a higher price will not increase the quantity supplied in the market. The standard example of pure economic rent is agricultural land. There is a fixed quantity of useable land, and competing sources of DEMAND for the land determine the market price. A high percentage of agricultural land in the United States is rented out. Depending on the expected profitability of crops that can be grown, demand will increase of decrease and price will rise or fall, depending on demand. In many areas of the country, nonagricultural uses, generating higher use values for agricultural land, result in the conversion of agricultural property into commercial or residential areas. This activity, once approved by zoning officials, increases the economic rent to the resource holder. Quasi rent is a payment in excess of the resource owner’s short-run opportunity cost. The difference between economic rent and quasi rent is the response of suppliers to changing prices. Economic rent assumes quantity supplied does not change with price, while quasi rent assumes higher prices induce greater quantities supplied. Quasi rent is the difference between the current price and the price suppliers would have accepted. For example, if an employer offers a job-seeker $10 per hour more than he or she would have accepted, that is a quasi rent. In most markets, word will get out that higher-than-expected wages are being paid by an employer or industry, resulting in an increase in supply and a lowering of market wages. Thus the quasi rent is a shortrun phenomenon, disappearing in the long run.