#tullock

[firewolffinance]

Fond Memories of Alchian and Tullock

Fond Memories of Alchian and Tullock

Warren Coats, who earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, sent me a reminiscence of Gordon Tullock and mentioned Armen Alchian. He wrote: I loved your discussion of your [DRH note: and Steve Globerman’s] new book on EconTalk. As someone who knows my Chicago background more than almost anyone you might enjoy the following remembrances. From Chicago I joined the…

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[physicianusaorg-blog]

Dr. ANTHONY C TULLOCK - PHYSICAL THERAPIST

Check Dr. ANTHONY C TULLOCK - PHYSICAL THERAPIST Profile on http://www.physicianusa.org/4/dr-anthony-c-tullock-physical-therapist/

Dr. ANTHONY C TULLOCK - PHYSICAL THERAPIST

Meet Dr. ANTHONY C TULLOCK , - PHYSICAL THERAPIST, Fix Appointment, Phone number, Contacts & Get medical advice here.

[freemarketliberal-blog]

Gordon Tullock on Voting

[freemarketliberal-blog]

RIP Gordon Tullock

[lombardstreet]

Gordon Tullock, Student of Society

Gordon Tullock stood transfixed by an anthill outside the Center for Public Choice. When another scholar asked him what he was doing, Tullock replied brusquely: “Research.”

Indeed, it must have been research, because Tullock would go on to publish The Economics of Non-Human Societies shortly thereafter. It was an answer to the problem he saw in the anthill: how do autonomous creatures with highly limited intelligence divide labor among themselves and coordinate without command? Bee queens, for one thing he observed, change their environment by releasing pheromones and laying eggs; the other bees just respond based on their preferences. 

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Born February 13, 1922, Tullock received his JD from the University of Chicago in 1947 and then became an officer in the Foreign Service. There, he read Ludwig von Mises’s treatise Human Action. It helped inspire him to pursue a broad research agenda with the individual as the unit of analysis (methodological individualism) and the individual’s understanding of her social context as the analyst’s data (methodological subjectivism).  

In 1956, Tullock left for the Hoover Institution. In 1958, with the help of now-Nobel laureate James Buchanan, Tullock secured a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson Center, which Buchanan had co-founded to promote a rebirth of classical political economy. 

Tullock went on to found the Journal of Non-Market Decision Making (later to become Public Choice) and to cofound the Center for Studies in Public Choice. Along with Buchanan, he was the epicenter of the Virginia school of political economy, so-called for its prominence at UVA, first, followed by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and George Mason University.

INTELLECTUAL LIFE

Tullock’s contributions have been so influential that many have put forward his name as a Nobel contender — and yet he took just one economics course in his life. 

Constitutional Choice

His first revolutionary contribution was the 1962 foundational work in constitutional political economy, co-authored with Buchanan, titled The Calculus of Consent. The two authors explored the rules within which the game of politics takes place. 

What rules allow all parties to improve their welfare? Whereas in markets, voluntary transactions make all parties better off, in politics, the same is true only when the rules require unanimity. Under such an institution, individuals exchange consent for one another’s favored projects and all benefit. 

In thus treating politics as a form of exchange, Buchanan and Tullock developed the concept of logrolling. They showed that despite its unsavory connotations, logrolling is only a symptom of pork-barrel politics. It is only harmful when a simple-majority rule allows the interests of some to override the interests of others.

But the absence of unanimity in ordinary politics doesn’t in itself suggest majoritarian democracy. Individuals acting in their self-interest recognize that the harms that come from majority rule should be considered side by side with the difficulty of reaching consensus under a unanimity rule. A qualified-majority rule and a bicameral legislature are two ways polities can strike a balance.

Bureaucracy

A second penetrating work is Tullock’s Bureaucracy (1965). Here he explored how higher-ups and subordinates face insuperable problems in coordinating their disparate bits of knowledge. In markets, profit-and-loss signals allow independent individuals to adjust their actions to the needs of others, even though each knows only a small piece of the whole. But individuals don’t have signals like that in politics. 

Rent-Seeking

A third revolutionary work came in 1967. Arnold Harberger had inspired Tullock indirectly by finding the harm from monopoly to be less than one-tenth of 1 percent of GNP in the ‘20s. How could it be so low? 

Tullock believed Harberger had overlooked a critical cost. Whereas Harberger only saw that monopolies allocate resources inefficiently, Tullock saw that individuals also waste resources to get the privilege to allocate resources inefficiently. More generally, people use up goods and services in competing to win prizes of all sorts. Privilege is one such prize, as are plunder and tariffs. Anne Kreuger later termed Tullock’s insight rent-seeking.

CONCLUSION

Through all this research, Tullock spawned a whole generation of scholars of political economy. His insights have so revolutionized the way we think that they sound unremarkable today. You can honor his contributions by thinking of him when you hear about vote trading or lobbying for political favors — or even the next time you marvel while gazing at an anthill.

[jimrosenz]

Welfare economics of monopoly and rent seeking

Welfare economics of monopoly and rent seeking

Monopolisation has resulted in a higher price being paid (Pm not Pc) and the quantity bought (Qm not Qc) has been reduced. Part of the consumer surplus triangle has been shifted to producers as excess profits but part of it is totally lost to society as shown by the reduction in output.

  The monopolised industry may result in more efficient production techniques and lowered costs. The net…

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[jimrosenz]

Hayek’s spotted record as a prophet in The Road to Serfdom – Part 1

Hayek’s spotted record as a prophet in The Road to Serfdom – Part 1

Gordon Tullock used Sweden to support his argument that the basic problem with The Road to Serfdom was:

“that it offered predictions which turned out to be false. The steady advance of government in places such as Sweden did not lead to any loss of non-economic freedoms."

Hayek discusses the Road to Serfdom

When looking back…

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[donttreadonvirginia]

Happy 92nd Birthday Gordon Tullock!