Remembering Gordon Tullock

Excerpt

My earliest memory of Gordon Tullock is from fall 1973. I had received a one-year post-doctoral fellowship at the Center for Study of Public Choice at Virginia Tech, and I explained to Tullock that I planned to spend the year reviewing ways of making collective decisions. He responded, “Well, if you are going to do that, you should include Edward Clarke’s idea.” In 1971, Tullock had published Clarke’s paper, “Multipart Pricing of Public Goods,” in Public Choice. Tullock told to me that he had not understood what Clarke was saying, but he believed that if it was right it was important, so he published it. He did not consult any reviewers. That article, with 2,677 Google Scholar citations as of December 2014, is by far the most widely cited article ever published in Public Choice. Tullock’s treatment of that article was typical for him. He consulted reviewers only when he needed their help to make up his mind. …