Gordon Tullock

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Gordon Tullock

Gordon Tullock (born February 13, 1922) is currently Professor of Law and Economics at the George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia.

A native of Rockford, Illinois, Tullock received his J.D. from the University of Chicago in 1947 and an honorary Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1994. He is a distinguished fellow of the American Economic Association (1998). He has published more than 150 papers and 23 books, including The Politics of Bureaucracy (1965), Private Wants, Public Means (1970), The Logic of the Law (1971), The Vote Motive (1976; 2006), Autocracy (1987), Rent Seeking (1993), The Economics of Non-Human Societies (1994) and On Voting: A Public Choice Approach (1998).

The Calculus of Consent (1962), which he co-authored with James M. Buchanan, is considered to be one of the classic works that founded the discipline of public choice theory. In 1967 he identified the phenomenon of rent-seeking. “Tullock’s hypotheses,” “Tullock’s laws,” and “Tullock’s paradoxes” have shaped the development of public choice and have charted new areas in law and economics and sociobiology.

In 1966, Professor Tullock became the founding editor of Papers in Non-Market Decision Making, a journal which was later renamed Public Choice. Until May 1990 he remained senior editor of Public Choice. He has also served as President of the Southern Economic Association, the Western Economic Association and the Public Choice Society. In 1996 he was elected to the American Political Science Review Hall of Fame.