The generalization of rent shrinking presented in this section may be of more than theoretical interest. Some real world situations appear to have elements of rent shrinking, as well as the refunding of expenditures. United States Department of Defense procurement of major weapons systems has some of the characteristics of a rent seeking game [8]. Furthermore, the research and development costs of the competing firms are at least partly reimbursed by the Department of Defense. The possibility of second sourcing indicates that the expenditures of losing firms may reduce the rent available to the firm that wins the initial production contract.