James M. Buchanan

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James M. Buchanan : biography

3 October 1919 – 9 January 2013

James McGill Buchanan, Jr. ( October 3, 1919 – January 9, 2013) was an American economist known for his work on public choice theory, for which he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in 1986. Buchanan’s work initiated research on how politicians’ self-interest and non-economic forces affect government economic policy. He was a member of the Board of Advisors of The Independent Institute, a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute, and professor at George Mason University.

List of publications

  • He listed his principal books as of 1988 as: Liberty, Market and State, 1985; The Reason of Rules (with G. Brennan),1985; The Power to Tax (with G. Brennan),1980; What should Economists Do? 1979; Freedom in Constitutional Contract,1978; Democracy in Deficit (with R. Wagner), 1977; The Limits of Liberty, 1975; Cost and Choice, 1969; Demand and Supply of Public Goods, 1968; Public Finance in Democratic Process, 1967; The Calculus of Consent (with G. Tullock),1962; Fiscal Theory and Political Economy, 1960; Public Principles of Public Debt, 1958.
  • by James M. Buchanan, at the . Twenty-volume work, copyrighted but nine of the 20 volumes are free to read and access; fully searchable online. (Also available at: .)
  • A listing of Buchanan’s publications from 1949 to 1986 can be found at , 1987, Vol. 89. No. 1, pp. 17–37. These are available through the Library of Economics and Liberty at:
    • with Gordon Tullock
    • by James M. Buchanan, at the Library of Economics and Liberty
    • with Richard E. Wagner
    • with Geoffrey Brennan
    • with Geoffrey Brennan
  • Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative: The Normative Vision of Classical Liberalism (Cheltenham UK: Edward Elgar, 2005)
  • Economics from the Outside In: Better than Plowing and Beyond (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2007)

Approach to economic analysis

Buchanan was largely responsible for the rebirth of political economy as a scholarly pursuit.Boettke, P.J. (1998). James M. Buchanan and the rebirth of political economy, in (S. Pressman and R. Holt, eds.), Against the Grain: Dissent in Economics, pp. 21–39, Aldershot, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 1998 Buchanan emphasized that public policy cannot be considered in terms of distribution, but is instead always a question of the choice over rules of the game that engender a pattern of exchange and distribution. His work in public choice theory is often interpreted as the quintessential case of economic imperialism; Amartya Sen, in Economics and Sociology, ch. 14, Princeton: Princeton University Press. p. 263 however, as Amartya Sen has argued, Buchanan should not be identified with economic imperialism, since Buchanan has done more than most to introduce ethics, legal political thinking, and indeed social thinking into economics.Swedberg, R. (1990). Economics and Sociology: On Redefining Their Boundaries, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. p. 263 Crucial to understanding Buchanan’s system of thought is the distinction he made between politics and policy. Politics is about the rules of the game, where policy is focused on strategies that players adopt within a given set of rules. “Questions about what are good rules of the game are in the domain of social philosophy, whereas questions about the strategies that players will adopt given those rules is the domain of economics, and it is the play between the rules (social philosophy) and the strategies (economics) that constitutes what Buchanan refers to as constitutional political economy”."Where Economics and Philosophy Meet: Review of The Elgar Companion to Economics and Philosophy with responses from the authors", The Economic Journal, 116 (June), 2006

Buchanan’s important contribution to constitutionalism is his development of the sub-discipline of constitutional economics., Library of Economics and Liberty., 1990. "The Domain of Constitutional Economics," Constitutional Political Economy, 1(1), pp. –18. Also as at 1990b & . According to Buchanan the ethic of constitutionalism is a key for constitutional order and "may be called the idealized Kantian world" where the individual "who is making the ordering, along with substantially all of his fellows, adopts the moral law as a general rule for behaviour". James Buchanan, The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty, Volume 1, Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, 1999, p. 314 Buchanan rejects "any organic conception of the state as superior in wisdom, to the citizens of this state". This philosophical position forms the basis of constitutional economics. Buchanan believed that every constitution is created for at least several generations of citizens. Therefore, it must be able to balance the interests of the state, society, and each individual.Buchanan, J., Logical Formulations of Constitutional Liberty, Vol. 1, Indianapolis, 1999, p. 372.