Secrets of Economics Editors

15. Supplying Private Goods and Collective Goods at Public Choice

15 You haven’t done nearly as bad of a job [as book review editor] as I expected. —Gordon Tullock to the author, circa 19911 Editors are grossly underpaid for their work, and they are grateful for every bit of help. —William G. Shepherd (1995, 122) Public Choice, under the title Papers on Non-Market Decision Making, was launched at the University of Virginia (UVA) by Gordon Tullock in 1966 (Rowley and Houser 2012, 16). Apparently at the suggestion of William C. Mitchell (Simmons 2011, xiii), the journal was given its present name in 1969, coincident with the establishment of the Center for Study of Public Choice at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), which reassembled from diaspora a group of former UVA faculty members and graduate students who had scattered to the winds after administrators there had denied Tullock promotion to full professor on three separate occasions (Rowley and Houser 2012, 17). Tullock, who holds—and always will hold—the title of founding editor on the masthead of Public Choice, originally planned to publish one volume of articles annually in book form rather than as a more standard academic periodical comprising two or more issues per year (Tullock 1991, 130). He began the journal on a shoestring, after learning to his pleasant surprise that the University of Virginia Press was willing to print his first issue for the modest sum of $700 (130). From then on, supported by small grants from the National Science Foundation, fees collected from authors who bought reprints of their articles, the “free” use of UVA’s office facilities and typing services (supplied by the invaluable Betty Tillman), supplemented from time to time by money from his Supplying Private Goods and Collective Goods at Public Choice William F. Shughart II 232 William F. Shughart II own pocket, Tullock released sequels to the first volume of Papers on Non-Market Decision Making over the next two years.2 Following its renaming, Public Choice attracted a growing number of new manuscript submissions. Faced with an increasingly heavy workload that he could no longer handle himself, Tullock contracted with Martinus Nijhoff in 1978 to publish and distribute the journal (Tullock 1991, 136) and to provide him with periodic but modest compensation. His decision was based on his need for assistance with the business end of journal management (including printing, mailing, and collecting payments from subscribers) and not with his editorial responsibilities. He relished the opportunity to read the manuscripts of contributors to the expanding public-choice literature, especially those of younger scholars whose academic careers he was predisposed to promote by issuing decisions to accept for publication papers that had been rejected elsewhere (Tullock 1991, 135).3 After being disappointed by the process of soliciting and reading the reports of external reviewers,4 Tullock (1991, 132) did “most of the refereeing” of manuscripts submitted to Public Choice himself. On the rare occasions when Tullock had a submission in hand about which he was not sure, he typically sought the advice of a colleague down the hallway at the Center for Study of Public Choice, asking that person not for a full referee’s report but for a brief written or verbal opinion supporting an up-or-down editorial decision.5 Thus, until May 1990, when Tullock handed the editorial reins over to Charles Rowley and Robert Tollison, who became joint coeditors for manuscripts submitted from North America, Public Choice essentially was a one-man show (Rowley 1991a, 201–202).6 The journal prospered under Tullock’s somewhat idiosyncratic but brilliant editorial regime. As of 1988, Public Choice ranked thirty-second on a list of eighty-six economics journals judged on the basis of various metrics, including the impact factor, which was compiled from data published in the Social Science Citation Index (Durden, Ellis, and Millsaps 1991, 173–174). One reason for the journal’s success, in my judgment, was that, whether or not he solicited or accepted the advice of other scholars as to a particular manuscript’s merits or demerits, Tullock saw every paper submitted to Public Choice and made all editorial decisions personally. In actual practice, Tullock stored in separate filing cabinet drawers every manuscript he had accepted, rejected, or returned for revisions. He knew the authors and the topics of current research in public choice and could, Supplying Private Goods and Collective Goods at Public Choice 233 by monitoring and managing...