Valuing Tullock's Rejects: The Reception of His Work in Rent Seeking‪.‬

Gordon Tullock's published articles fall into two categories: those which were accepted upon first submission and those which were rejected by one or more journals until they were finally accepted [Brady and Tollison, 1994]. In most cases, undeterred by the editor's decision, Tullock simply submitted the rejected paper to another journal without revisions. This paper examines the second category of articles by comparing the number of citations of Tullock's articles with those of the articles which journals chose to publish over Tullock's. Many of Tullock's most celebrated papers were initially rejected by prestigious journals on the stated grounds that his ideas either were not clear to the referees, did not appear significant, or did not appear to result from economic reasoning. In my opinion, the less than enthusiastic response to Tullock's submissions may be explained by the radicalism of his ideas and the fact that his formal training in economics was limited to the first six weeks of a one-quarter class taught by Henry Simons at the University of Chicago. It might be said that Tullock's ideas were ahead of his time and their significance could not be appreciated by most members of the profession. On the other hand, some would say that he was an interloper unschooled in the established doctrines of the day. That said, publication in a prestigious journal is no guarantee that you will be cited in the long term. Moreover, if an author puts forth a worthwhile idea, he will eventually be cited regardless of where it is first published. And this is what happened for Tullock. This paper discusses the important question of the accuracy of editorial decisions in scholarly journals. In the economics profession and other fields of inquiry, the reputation and pay of a professional scholar depends on his publication record in scholarly journals. Thus the progress of science is a function of the reward system which, in turn, depends upon the actions of editors and referees about publication.