Anthony Downs

“I have heard a few leading scholars in public choice express the view that the first Nobel Prize for contributions to public choice should have gone to Anthony Downs. I think it is fair to say that his An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957) has had a bigger impact than The Calculus, particularly among political scientists. But I do not think that a Nobel Prize should be awarded for a doctoral dissertation, however brilliant the effort. Downs has made only a few contributions to the public choice literature following the 1957 book, and none of these has had much of an impact.”