Prosser and Alchian on Good Fruit

George Stigler says somewhere that the guy who gets credit for a discovery is not the first person to make it, but the last.

I just stumbled on a Wiki article on “the Alchian-Allen theorem” (link). Per Wiki:

It states that when the prices of two substitute goods, such as high and low grades of the same product, are both increased by a fixed per-unit amount such as a transportation cost or a lump-sum tax, consumption will shift toward the higher-grade product. This is true because the added per-unit amount decreases the relative price of the higher-grade product.

Wiki says the theorem was “developed in 1964,” but goes on to add that it “is also known as the ‘shipping the good apples out’” theorem, with a ref (but not a link?) to this guy.

Hmph. I can’t seem to find a link at the moment but there is a law review article by the late, great William L. Prosser, once dean of the law school at Berkeley, if not of the entire law teaching profession—an article on why you should not bother trying to get a job at Berkeley. The article was called “We Ship All the Good Fruit East.”

Prosser died in 1972. No idea whether he ever heard of Alchian, or Alchian of him.