Remarks Read to Honor Gordon Tullock at the 2014 SEA Meetings (Extended Version)

|Peter Boettke|

Gordon Tullock (February 13, 1922-November 3, 2014)

The great economist and political scientist Gordon Tullock passed away on November 3rd 2014 at the age of 92. Tullock was an iconoclastic thinker who challenged conventional wisdom in law, political science, and public policy analysis. His was best known as a co-founder (along with Nobel Prize winner James Buchanan) of the field of study known as Public Choice – the applications of the tools of economic analysis to the realm of political decision making. The term Public Choice – to be contrast with Private Choice – evolved from an earlier phase Non-Market Decision Making. That earlier phrase in many ways captures Tullock’s insights better than the more narrow terminology of Public Choice.

Tullock published books on bureaucracy, the jury system, the politics of redistribution, the economic organization on non-human societies such as insects, and the organization of scientific inquiry. These were all examples of non-market decision environments, yet each of the environments has a unique incentive structure that influenced the decisions of the relevant actors, and unique mechanisms of information flow that guide the actors in responding to the incentives they face. Tullock pursued the logic of his analysis wherever it lead without regard to political or methodological fashions of the time. Bill Breit often told the story that on one occasion during morning coffee at UVa, Tullock interrupted a conversation going on between the Dean of Arts and Sciences and a famed sociologists from Columbia who strongly advocated unilateral disarmament by the US in the Cold War era of the early 1960s. Tullock thought the argument was naïve, the sociologists responded by asking Tullock what he thought was the likely outcome if the US engaged in such a policy. Tullock said that he thought such a policy would mean the US would be taken over by Mexico the following day, at which point the Dean and the sociologists stormed out of the room refusing to engage Tullock in a discussion about the role incentives may play in strategic military calculations. Tullock never understood such a reaction by those who are tasks with playing with ideas; rather than run away, it should be a free-for-all of give and take, with the best argument winning the day. Breit adds that Tullock took a sip of his coffee and asked quizzically “Why do you think they will not promote me here to full professor?” Something to the great shame of the UVa administrators of that era as they denied Tullock promotion to full professor 3 times during his tenure there.

One could argue that Tullock was the first “freakonomics” writer as he published his New World of Economics in 1975 (with Richard McKenzie) where he tried to demonstrate that the logic of economic analysis applied everywhere and to everything. This ability to see the essential elements of the logic of economic analysis everywhere led Tullock to be generally be recognized as one of the founding intellectual fathers of law and economics, public choice, and bio-economics.

One topic that Tullock is most well known for is the vote motive within modern democratic societies. As he explained the expected value of anyone’s vote is less than the cost incurred in casting a vote, so why do people vote? Rather than view voting as sanctified activity, Tullock exposed it to the critical analysis of economics and in so doing demonstrated both that voting turnout is a function of rational decision calculus.

In addition to his work on voting, Tullock was known for the development of the concept of rent-seeking. Rent-seeking is the attempt to get the government to create a monopoly privilege for the good or service that you and your company provide. Using this concept Tullock was able to explain both the true costs of monopoly privileges to an economy, and the wasteful expenditures on lobbying that are experienced in western democracies.

Tullock and Buchanan produced the most important work in modern political economy with The Calculus of Consent – a book that explores the logical foundations of constitutional democracy. They discuss not only the fundamental structure of government, but also the decision calculus that takes place within that structure. Rules of the game, and the strategies players will play within those rules is the easiest way to explain the analytical focus of their work, and thinking of questions of public policy in this way sheds new light on the choices made by policy makers that often appear to be counter-productive rather than appropriate responses to the situation facing them.

Tullock was an irascible, but very charming man to those who knew and worked with him. His gruff exterior, combined with a quick and biting wit often at others expense, led many to misunderstand him. He was simply one of the quickest and cleverest social scientists to practice in the second half of the 20th century. At a seminar once, Tullock turned to me and asked what I thought of the argument being made in the presentation. I replied, “Gordon, I have to think a bit more, I am not that quick on my feet.” To which Tullock pointing the nearest empty chair simply said, “Well sit down then.” He didn’t want the conversation to stop – he never did. Another classic example of his quick yet biting wit was how he began his SEA Presidential Address (1981) by pointing out a unique fact of his case: “It is customary when giving a presidential address to begin by remarking on how happy you feel. I have an even stronger reason for being happy than most presidents. It will at long last permit me to break into the Southern Economic Journal. Up to this point, referees of that august institution have always rejected everything that I sent them. Finally, however, I am privileged to put an unrefereed paper in the Journal and, hence, do not have to worry about this one being rejected. The audience may feel that although it is nice for me it is hard on the Journal, but under the sacred traditions of the Southern Economic Association, the editors and referees can do nothing about it.”

He was constantly playing with ideas, pushing boundaries, never worried about social conventions or political sensitivities. He saw his job as to just throw out arguments like someone throwing darts, it is amazing in retrospect to see how many of those darts landed right on the bull’s-eye, but no doubt some may argue that his some of those darts missed the dart-bard altogether. But even those that seemed so far afield often were stated that way to get you to think harder about the topic. He was the champion of thinking about off-setting behavior, and one clear example was his discussion of automobile safety. In the 1960s-1970s mandatory seatbelt regulations were introduced, but it turns out that seatbelts could be correlated with increased accidents. Why? It was reasoned that seatbelts caused a moral hazard problem, the increased perception of safety allowed drivers to take greater risk in their driving decisions. So what was Tullock’s answer? Don’t require seatbelts, but instead put a spike in the steering wheel pointed directly at the drivers heart. If the driver made bad decisions, well the result would be a quick end. Thus, Tullock reasoned they would be incentivized to make very cautious driving decisions. But stating this in extreme form, Tullock makes his readers think about the incentives – the costs and benefits – one faces in driving. He applied this same tactic to such issues as crime and justice, and politics and redistribution. Incentives do indeed matter, and thinking seriously about incentives from all possible angles is the job of the social scientist.

Tullock did that better than anyone. As James Buchanan once described him, Tullock was a natural born economist.

Tullock was a Professor of Law and Economics Emeritus at George Mason University, he previously taught at University of Arizona, George Mason University, Virginia Polytechnic University, Rice University, University of Virginia, and University of South Carolina. He was born in Rockford, Illinois. His unique academic skills were recognized at an early age, and he was accepted into an accelerated program at the University of Chicago Law School – where he had expected to complete his undergraduate studies in 2 years and then complete 3 years of formal legal study. He finished the undergraduate curriculum in 1 year, and finished 2 years of law school before joining the military. During that time, Tullock came under the influence of the famed Chicago School Economist Henry Simons. Tullock served in the US military during WWII, and took part in the Normandy landings on D-Day +7 as part of the Ninth Infantry. After the war, his finished law school at Chicago, obtaining his JD in 1947, and then began a career in Foreign Service (1947-56) holding positions as vice consul in Tientsin, China, Yale and Cornell for advanced study in Chinese, Consulate General in Hong Kong, U.S. Embassy in Korea, and the Office of Intelligence and Research in Washington. During his diplomatic service, Tullock had already published articles in academic economic journals. In 1958, at the age of 36, Tullock began his academic career as a post doctoral fellow at the Thomas Jefferson Center for Studies in Political Economy at the University of Virginia.

Throughout his academic career, Tullock would receive many honors, including being elected President of Public Choice, the Southern Economic Association, the Western Economic Association, the International Bio¬-Economics Society, the Atlantic Economic Society and the Association for Free Enterprise Education. In 1992, he received an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from the University of Chicago, in 1994 he received an Honorary Doctorate in Social Science from Universidad Francisco Marroquin, and in 1996 he was elected to the American Political Science Review Hall of Fame. In 1998, Gordon Tullock was named Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association.

Gordon Tullock is survived by his sister Mary Lou Gunderson and her husband, Bob of Des Moines, Iowa.

Comments

[Barkley Rosser]

Needless to say (although I am going to), he did not get that other award that he also deserved that his famous also late coauthor did get, although longstanding rumor has it that he had upset those who make the decisions on that one with various remarks he had made over the years.

RIP, Gordon.

[Sharon Brown-Hruska]

As an undergrad at Virginia Tech in the 70s, I studied Law and Economics with him and he encouraged me to add economics to my international studies degree (even though I had no interest in becoming an economist prior to his course). A legal scholar himself, he melded the disciplines with such precision, he inspired many and made a profound impact on me to think critically and challenge conventional wisdom.