The Emergence of the Tullock-Contest

Abstract

The objective of the present paper is to show the historical or rather chronological development of the Tullock contest. It aims at showing the connections between the ’deadweight loss (DWL) triangles’, which were extended to what is now known as ’Harberger triangles’ (Harberger 1954; Wellford 2009), the concept of ’rent-seeking’ (Tullock 1967, 1997; Krueger 1974), and the ’Tullock contest’ (Tullock 1975, 1980; Tullock and Lockard 2001) itself. Looking at many relevant papers that have been published in this context, one will recognise the historical events that motivated Tullock to come up with the initial game, even though he himself said that he accidentally stumbled over many implications of the game. The motivations behind the Tullock contest are not only interesting from a ’nerdy’ or historical point of view but they can also facilitate the understanding of the underlying problems that are being investigated and the respective solutions that are being offered by Tullock and other researchers today.

Keywords: Tullock Contest, Game Theory