Over at Greg Mankiw's Blog, the Harvard econ folks are running a numbers game over who wins the Nobel on Oct 12.

HOW TO ENTER: Nominate who you think will win the 2009 Memorial Prize in Economics. Each name that you enter costs $1. You can also guess that no entrant will correctly guess the recipient(s). You can enter as many times for as many names you’d like.

[...]

All money collected will be divided between the winners of the pool. If there is one recipient of the prize, the payout will be divided among all those entrants who guessed correctly, with each of those correct guessers receiving a share in proportion to her/his share of the total number of bets placed on the prize recipient. If no one guesses correctly, the votes will be divided in the same fashion among those who entered "No Correct Guess." If there are n>1 recipients, exactly 1/n of the payout will be allocated to each and distributed as per the rules for one recipient.

This sure sounds a lot like Tullock's second big rent seeking paper ("Efficient Rent Seeking," 1980). This one paper set off a firestorm of academic work into game theory, political economy, and welfare economics, one which lasted a generation and then some. Nowadays, whenever we think of people sinking time and resources into unproductive activities, the phrase "rent seeking" comes to mind and Gordon Tullock is somewhere nearby, probably wagging his finger at you or low-talking into his recorder. The man had it figured out before anyone else -- not every detail and not every sub-game perfect equilibrium solution, but the idea intact and ready for delivery. Seriously. If we're talking pure merit, can anyone legitimately deny that there is a strong case for Tullock (and Tullock alone)?