Robert Tollison and operationalizing public choice

In this tribute to Robert Tollison, I will outline his contributions to the development of public choice. I focus on Tollison’s work on rent-seeking, the political economy of reform, and the rules level of analysis in sports economics. Throughout his career, Tollison brilliantly figured out ways to take insights from price theory and public choice theory and operationalize them using multiple methods of empirical analysis, including historical interpretation and statistical testing.     

Comment on Tollison’s contributions to economic history and the history of economic thought

Abstract Robert Tollison has furthered our understanding of mercantilism and other pivotal episodes in economic history considerably and also has applied the methods of positive economics to study the development of economic thought more generally. This article traces Tollison’s intellectual interest in those topics to his liberal arts education as an undergraduate at Wofford College and supplies commentary on Ekelund and Hébert’s valuable survey of his contributions to those areas of the literature.     

Public choice theory and antitrust policy

We survey the pioneering contributions of Robert Tollison to the theory and practice of antitrust law enforcement. Inspired by his period of service during Ronald Reagan’s first administration as Director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Economics, Tollison was the first scholar to apply public choice reasoning to the question why antitrust frequently fails to achieve its stated goal of protecting consumers against unwarranted exercises of market power. In supplying evidence that the outcomes of antitrust processes are shaped more by special interests than by the public’s interest, he was instrumental in launching a wholly new research program.     

The regulation of lobbyists

The authors gratefully acknowledge helpful comments from Charles Rowley, Robert Tollison, and a referee of this journal.     

Perestroika and public choice: The economics of autocratic succession in a rent-seeking society

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Public Choice Society Meetings, Tucson, AZ, March 1990, and at the Austrian Economics Colloquium at New York University, September 1990. We would like to thank the participants at our session, and those at the Colloquium, for their comments and criticisms. In addition, Hal Hochman, Israel Kirzner, Mario Rizzo, Charles Rowley, Robert Tollison, Gordon Tullock, and an anonymous referee provided useful comments and criticisms. The usual caveat applies.     

Interest-group analysis in economic history and the history of economic thought

This article reviews Bob Tollison’s conjoined contributions to the scholarly literature in the closely related fields of economic history and history of economic thought, underscoring his integration of public choice and interest-group analysis into the historian’s purview. It identifies the overarching themes of his research and summarizes the major findings of his key publications.     

Interest groups, public choice and the economics of religion

This article reviews Bob Tollison’s conjoint contributions to the burgeoning area of the economics of religion, underscoring his integration of public choice and interest-group themes into the microeconomic analysis of faith-based organizational architecture, institutional decision making and doctrinal innovation. Beginning with study of the medieval Catholic Church, moving forward to the Protestant Reformation and beyond, it supplies a timeline of developments and the major findings of each phase of his research program.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
Andrea L. Bonnicksen . 1989. In Vitro Fertilization: Building Policy from Laboratories to Legislatures .
Jacques S. Gansler . 1989. Affording Defense .
Harrel R. Rodgers, Jr. (ed.). 1988. Beyond Welfare: New Approaches to the Problem of Poverty in America .
Alan C. Lamborn and Stephen P. Mumme . 1988. Statecraft, Domestic Politics, and Foreign Policy-Making: The El Chamizal Dispute .
Edmund F. McGarrell . 1988. Juvenile Correctional Reform: Two Decades of Policy and Procedural Change .
Robert D. Tollison (ed.). 1988. Clearing the Air: Perspectives on Environmental Tobacco Smoke .     

France's last sociologist

Abstract

The publication of Michael Grenfell's Pierre Bourdieu: Agent Provocateur provides an ideal opportunity for a career retrospective of the academic sociologist who, in recent times, has taken most seriously his role as a public intellectual, indeed, one who gradually warmed to the status of ‘universal intellectual’ with increasing postmodernist disapproval. The French context of Bourdieu's development and reception is highlighted.     

学术论文中的学术失范、学术不端现象及其防范

目前辨别及防范学术失范和学术不端行为已成为学术期刊出版的一项重要工作。选取某学术期刊,对其来稿情况及利用《学术不端行为检测系统》比对的结果进行分析。结果表明,作者来稿中的学术失范和学术不端行为的产生既有主观原因又有客观因素,涉及到作者的学术态度、写作动机,对学术道德的认识,对引文标注、著作权法等相关规范和法律条文的理解,以及对网络媒体和纸质期刊之间关系的了解等各个方面。学术期刊的编辑,是学术论文发表的审核者和把关者,应该利用好《学术不端行为检测系统》,辩证地分析检测结果,提高辨别和防范学术失范及学术不端行为的能力,尽最大可能避免重复发表和剽窃之作流向社会。     

How is the Use of Performance Information Related to Performance of Public Sector Professionals? Evidence from the Field of Academic Research

There is inconclusive evidence as to how performance management is actually related to performance, particularly in subfields of the public sector where professional work prevails. We propose that the association between the use of performance information and performance of public sector professionals varies with the targets of management control. We test our hypotheses in the field of academic research, a prime example of professionalism in the public sector. The overall results of an online survey with 1,976 observations suggest that performance management is positively related to publication performance when performance information is used for the control of input targets. In contrast, we find negative associations of performance information with performance when used to control output targets. Public managers in professional fields should consider these countervailing relationships when they compose and use control systems.     

THE PROFESSIONAL CAREER PUBLIC SERVICE: SOME REFLECTIONS OF A PRACTITIONER

I feel it a great honour to be invited to give the Robert Garran Memorial Oration of 1979. Although Sir Robert and I were of different generations, I did have some personal contact with him following my coming to Canberra in 1939. I also had the pleasure of knowing two of his sons, John and Andrew. Andrew and I were colleagues in our roles as Chairmen of the Victorian and Commonwealth Public Service Boards respectively. These small personal associations enable me to appreciate all the better the wide-ranging and historic contributions made by Sir Robert to government in Australia.     

The bargaining range in legislative district apportionment

One of the few laws of political science is the fairly regular relationship in any given plurality electoral system known as thecube law, transforming vote shares into seat shares. In this paper, we develop an altogether different and more robust paradigm relating seats to votes which generates similar results as the cube law. In our model, political parties bargain with each other for an expected number of seats using the ability to gerrymander in determining their bargaining strength. We find that an arbitrated solution to the seat-vote allocation problem generates solutions remarkably similar to the conventional cube-law-based solutions. Thus our model can in some way replace the cube law paradigm. With our model, we are able to evaluate the impact ofBaker v. Carr (1962) on gerrymandering. We also find that proportional representation results can be achieved within our model by allowing non-zero population deviations between districts.I am grateful for the comments and criticism of David Levy, Bernard Grofman, Charles Rowley, William Crain, and Robert Tollison. Responsibility for all errors, of course, remains mine alone. This paper does not necessarily reflect the views of the American Association of Retired Persons.     

The politics of unemployment: Rates of unemployment and labour market policy

This article analyses the claims advanced by Robert McKenzie about the distribution of power in British political parties. It considers McKenzie's mode of analysis (with particular reference to Labour), his definition of terms, selection of evidence and interpretation of it. The major argument is that McKenzie over‐generalised from the events of the 1950s and 1960s and that subsequent events have severely undermined his thesis.     

STATESMEN IN DISGUISE*

It is a daunting honour to tread in the illustrious footsteps of those who have previously delivered this Oration. It is also a personal pleasure, because Sir Robert Garran was the gracious and tolerant chairman of the Canberra University College Council that gave me my first academic post. Impressive but totally unpretentious, Sir Robert was a man that I could look up to, literally as well as figuratively. In 1938, however, I was scarcely aware that Garran had been the first Commonwealth public servant, a permanent head for thirty-one years and, as Attorney-General John (later Sir John) Latham put it a few days after Garran retired in January 1932, "guide, philosopher and friend to every Federal Cabinet" during those years¹     

Vladimir Iowa Lenin,Part 1: A Bolshevik Studies American Agriculture

A busy year for Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1917 also marked the publication of his study of American agriculture. The report reads as more than a historical curiosity, offering insights, however era-bounded, on a variety of topics of substantive and epistemological interest today. Lenin writes of the history of American agriculture, its dynamic regionalism, and its sector-specific class conflicts. Along the way, despite his obvious structural tendencies, we meet an anti-foundational author who, while upbraiding bourgeois economists for their expedient technicism, often in scathing terms, also warns that sweeping conclusions about the sizes of farm and capitalization are problematic in the face of historically dependent and contradictory trends. Here, in the first of the paper’s two parts, we begin to place Lenin’s project in the broader stream of critical agrarian studies, including the classic contrast with agricultural economist Alexander Chayanov, but also the diseconomies of modern agriculture, the biological limits on industrializing food production, and Stalin’s “dekulakization” campaign. Our aims here are more than academic. The exploration is framed by the roles the structure of agriculture and its impacts on its participants play in political change, from elections to revolution.     

Monopoly rent seeking under conditions of uncertainty

In recent years, economists have come to recognize that the competition to obtain monopoly rents, i.e., rent seeking, may consume resources whose value greatly exceeds that associated with traditionally measured deadweight welfare loss triangles (Tollison, 1982). Early articles by Tullock (1967), Krueger (1974), and Posner (1975) all concluded that this competition would exactly dissipate the rents sought. Later articles by Tullock (1980) and Baysinger and Tollison (1980) modified that original conclusion. The present paper develops a model which raises further doubts about the complete transformation of rents into costs. The emphasis of the analytical framework presented is on the implications of the fact that rent seekers may typically be uncertain about being able to maintain a monopoly position even if they are initially successful in attaining one. It is demonstrated that when there is even a moderate level of uncertainty about retention, the likely effect will be a relatively large reduction in the magnitude of resources invested in rent seeking activities. In addition, it is shown that the size of this waste of resources depends somewhat on the extent to which rent seeking opportunities involve once and for all transfers as opposed to flows of rents. Finally, in those cases where a flow of rents is at stake, it is shown that considerable social waste might be eliminated through institutional changes which would reduce the subjective probabilities of potential monopolists retaining their rent streams once attained.     

Elinor Ostrom: uncommon

The placement of various tee boxes on golf courses subsidizes the first shot of each hole for certain players. McCormick and Tollison find that this subsidy is statistically larger (other factors equal) in the southern US states and that it has been decreasing over time. These findings illustrate more general issues of chivalry, gender, age, and opportunity costs. The economics profession will undoubtedly continue to use sports data to better understand the behavior and interactions of people and firms in the economy.     

Tollison costs and technological innovation: The case of environmental regulation

This paper departs from the Tullock cost paradigm that views competition for monopoly privilege as a welfare-inimical process that wastefully dissipates preexisting producers' surplus and, occasionally, leads to inefficient increases in costs and counterproductive uses of scarce resources. The potential availability of rent-seeking may bring about the elimination of inefficient regulatory regimes that retard or prevent the introduction of cost-reducing innovations. Air quality management is but one area in which innovation rent-seeking holds promise for concrete welfare gains. Researchers may wish to focus on institutional mechanisms designed to overcome the transactions costs and free rider disincentives to the formation of a coalition to seek innovation rents. An example of such a mechanism might be a joint venture that requires all venture members to engage in lobbying and to contribute to collective research efforts. These unaddressed questions await future research.The authors are grateful for the insightful comments of Gordon Tullock, Robert D. Tollison, Michael T. Marlow and J.R. Clark. The usual caveats apply. The views expressed herein are solely those of the authors and should not be taken to represent the views of their employers.