The prize for Phelps left me cold – until I learned that he said this:

One can hardly imagine, I think, how poor we would be today were it not for the rapid population growth of the past to which we owe the enormous number of technological advances enjoyed today. . . . If I could re-do the history of the world, halving population size each year from the beginning of time on some random basis, I would not do it for fear of losing Mozart in the process.

It still would have been better to give it to Tullock, though – or, better yet, bend the rules to give it posthumously to Julian Simon.