Luigi Zingales: belief

Transcript context

…One thing that strikes me about the literature on corruption, and rent-seeking, and political influence is what is sometimes here called the Tullock paradox. Gordon Tullock worked in this building, and Tullock raised the question of how much is at stake in politics? In the US, it’s about 40 percent of GDP. In Europe, it may be above 50 percent of GDP. Tullock was actually surprised, in a way, relative to that, how little was spent on lobbying. For him, there’s some kind of structural barrier story. What’s your take on the Tullock paradox? Why aren’t we even more corrupt yet, given what percent of GDP in this country is allocated through mechanisms of a mix of force and democratic whatever you want to call it rather than voluntary exchange? First of all, let me spend a word to praise Gordon Tullock. Very sorry he passed away recently, and I’m even more sorry that he wasn’t celebrated the way he deserved to be celebrated. In my view, he was an extremely insightful economist who made the point there is not enough money in politics in 1972, if I’m not mistaken, or ’74. A long time ago, yeah.…

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