Gordon Tullock
| Gordon Tullock | |
|---|---|
2007
|
|
| Born |
February 13, 1922 Rockford, Illinois |
| Died |
November 3, 2014 (aged 92) Des Moines, Iowa |
| Nationality | United States |
| Institution | George Mason University |
| Field |
Law and economics Public choice theory |
| School or tradition |
Public Choice school |
| Alma mater | University of Chicago |
| Influences |
Henry Calvert Simons Duncan Black Ludwig von Mises |
| Contributions | Rent-seeking |
Gordon Tullock (February 13, 1922 – November 3, 2014) was an economist and professor of law and Economics at the George Mason University School of Law. He is best known for his work on public choice theory, the application of economic thinking to political issues. He is one of the founding figures in his field.
A native of Rockford, Illinois, Tullock attended the University of Chicago and, after a break for military service during World War II, received a J.D. in 1947. Following a brief period in private practice, he joined the Foreign Service that fall. After completing training, he was posted to Tianjin, China, later receiving Chinese language instruction at Yale and Cornell and follow-on postings to Hong Kong and Korea. He resigned from the Foreign Service in 1956. While he originally intended to pursue a career as a foreign trader in the Far East, his work on The Politics of Bureaucracy eventually led him to begin collaboration with James M. Buchanan at the University of Virginia while Tullock worked at the University of South Carolina teaching international studies.
Tullock's collaboration with Buchanan produced The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (1962), which quickly became a seminal work in the new field of public choice. He later joined Buchanan as a faculty colleague at Virginia. For four years Buchanan and Tullock continued their research program, even founding a new journal for their field (1966), first called Papers in Non-Market Economics and eventually titled Public Choice, where they invited articles applying economic theory to all sorts of non-market phenomena, especially in the realm of government and politics. Despite the success of the book and the journal, disagreements with the UVA administration eventually led Tullock to leave.
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