Professor Gordon Tullock's New
and Collected Works
George Mason Professor of of Law Gordon
Tullock is one of the most well-respected scholars
in the area of public choice and law and economics.
He has been writing in these fields since 1954, and he
continues to publish highly-regarded scholarship.
Earlier this year, Edward Elgar published a new work
by Tullock entitled Public
Goods, Redistribution and Rent Seeking. As a
testament to Professor Tullock's long publishing history,
the Liberty Fund recently began a 10 book series of The
Selected Works of Gordon Tullock, covering writings
from 1954 to 2002 .
This series is edited by George Mason University’s
Duncan Black Professor of Economics Charles K.
Rowley, and the first five volumes have already
been published. Following is information
about Professor Tullock's
most recent work as well as a summary of the ten-volume
series of his collected works.
Newest Publication
Public
Goods, Redistribution and Rent Seeking
By Gordon Tullock
Edward Elgar, 2005
Hardcover: 160 pages
ISBN: 184376637X
Gordon Tullock, eminent political economist and one of
the founders of public choice, offers this new and fascinating
look at how governments and externalities are linked.
Economists frequently justify government as dealing with
externalities, defined as benefits or costs that are generated
as the result of an economic activity, but that do not
accrue directly to those involved in the activity. In this
original work, Gordon Tullock posits that government can
also create externalities. In doing so, he looks at governmental
activity that internalizes such externalities.
The Selected Works of Gordon Tullock: A Ten Volume Series
During the past half-century Gordon
Tullock has continually advanced the frontiers of political
economy, most particularly with respect to the workings
of representative democracies and autocracies. The Liberty
Fund is now publishing a ten-volume collection, The
Selected Works of Gordon Tullock. This series,
edited and arranged thematically by George Mason University’s
Duncan Black Professor of Economics Charles
K. Rowley,
brings together Tullock’s most significant contributions
to economics, political science, public choice, sociology,
law and economics, and bioeconomics.
Tullock followed a unique path in his
academic career. His exposure to formal economic training
was limited to one course taught by Henry Simons as part
of the law curriculum at the University of Chicago. Although
Tullock does not hold a degree in economics, he is one
of the most respected and widely cited economists of the
modern age. His influence on modern political economy is
simply immense. As Rowley points out in his introduction
to the first volume of this series, “Gordon Tullock
is an economist by nature rather than by training.” Assuredly,
his “outsider” perspective and his intellectual
brilliance cultivate an uncommon ability to think “outside
the box” and to explain scientifically phenomena
that are often intuitively obvious but not readily demonstrated.
Tullock and his 1962 coauthor, Nobel
laureate James M. Buchanan, are widely recognized as cofounders
of public choice, a field that systematically applies the
rational choice approach of economics to the analysis of
political markets. Public choice analysts evaluate the
impact on political outcomes exercised by voters, special
interests, bureaucrats, legislators, and presidents on
the assumption that each such actor pursues his own self-interest.
In so doing, public choice demonstrates that the “invisible
hand,” identified by Adam Smith as associating self-interest
in the private marketplace with the wealth of a nation,
does not necessarily hold in political markets, where the “visible
boot” of government, unless carefully checked, may
result in economic ruin.
Vol. 1: July 2004
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Vol. 2: November 2004
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Vol. 3: November 2004
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Vol. 4: February 2005
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Vol. 5: March 2005
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Vol. 6: June 2005
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Vol. 7: July 2005
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Vol. 8: December 2005
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Vol. 9: December 2005
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Vol. 10: January 2006
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last updated:
May 17, 2005
