We are just a few weeks away from when the next Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics is awarded. It's long past due for economist Gordon Tullock to win the prize. Tullock is one of the most influential economists of the last 100 years. Few American academics have the nerve to be so honest in their research. But, being different is what makes Gordon Tullock so special:
Shortly after George Mason University opened its new law-school building a few years ago, then-governor of Virginia Jim Gilmore toured it. He asked to meet Gordon Tullock, a renowned economist on the faculty. Off a curving fourth-floor hallway, in Tullock’s freshly furnished office, the two men shook hands. “You’re the governor?” asked Tullock. “Good. Then maybe you can fix the leak in my ceiling.”We'd like to thank Gordon Tullock for linking us on a politically incorrect article we wrote on class conflict. Here's a link to Gordon Tullock's highly influential paper The Welfare Costs of Tariffs, Monopolies and Theft which changed the way many people think about economics and politics. How can you know economics without an economics degree? Gordon Tullock explains:
And that, in a nutshell, may explain why Tullock has failed to win a Nobel Prize in economics — an award he richly deserves, but one that has eluded him for decades. He is famously impolitic, and has developed a knack for provocation — a skill that can be either irritating or endearing. Whatever its effect, however, Tullock’s fondness for controversy is backed up by a daring intellect that cuts across disciplines and has shaped free-market thinking for more than a generation. “Gordon is one of the most original-minded persons in the world,” says Milton Friedman, who took home the Nobel in 1976. “I always thought it was a mistake not to let him have a prize.”
As the Nobel Foundation prepares to name this year’s recipient in October, it would do well to reconsider the case for Tullock. He has led an important and influential life, despite being constantly overlooked.
Tullock, now 84, was born and raised in Rockford, Ill. Although he attended the University of Chicago, he never formally received his bachelor’s degree because he objected to paying a $5 fee. “It doesn’t sound like a lot of money now, but it was to me back then,” he explains. This refusal didn’t stop him from entering Chicago’s law school, where he took his first and only course in economics.
While posted to an American college to study Chinese, he read Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises's Human Action in his spare time and reports he later found himself better trained than his contemporaries who had Ph.D.'s in economics.Mises.
