Gordon Tullock has passed away at age 92

It is hard to know what to say — Gordon was a colleague of ours for many years and we all were very fond of him.  He was one of the most creative thinkers of his time.  His contributions include not just the seminal chapters of Calculus of Consent, but a wide range of ideas ranging from law and economics to monetary theory to the economics of insect societies.  Many of Gordon’s best ideas remain somewhat unmined, such as his analyses of jury trials, or his question why there is so little money in politics, relative to what is at stake.  Almost everything Gordon wrote was worth reading and he was also a wonderful critic of the work of others.  He knew a remarkable amount about history, including Chinese history, and was one of the quickest people I ever have met.  Just about everyone has his or her favorite Gordon Tullock story.  Gordon, by the way, took only one class in economics in his life, from Henry Simons, he was otherwise entirely self-taught.