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James McGill Buchanan, Jr. (born October 3, 1919) is an American economist renowned for his work on public choice theory, for which he won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Economics. Buchanan's work opened the door for the examination of how politicians' self-interest and non-economic forces affect government economic policy.

Biography

Buchanan graduated from Middle Tennessee Normal School in 1940. He completed his M.S. from the University of Tennessee in 1941 and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1948.

Buchanan has long been a professor at George Mason University, and is a central figure in the Virginia school of political economy. Buchanan also held teaching positions at the University of Virginia (founding the Thomas Jefferson center), UCLA, Florida State University, the University of Tennessee, and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute (with the Center for the Study of Public Choice). Buchanan moved with the center to its new home at GMU. Buchanan's work in economics included a rigorous analysis of the theory of logrolling.

Work

Buchanan's book, The Calculus of Consent (1962), co-authored with Gordon Tullock, is considered one of the classic works that founded the discipline of public choice, a melding of economics and political science. In particular (1962, p. v), the book is about the political organization of a free society. Buchanan writes that its method, conceptual apparatus, and analytics:

[A]re derived, essentially, from the discipline that has as its subject the economic organization of such a society.

The Calculus of Consent argues that government decisions are part of the economy, not exogenous factors. Therefore, methods of collective decisions must be studied as part of the study of the public sector. Calculus further describes the constitution as the line that is drawn between private and collective action. Public choice is then divided between pre- and post-constitutional phases.

Buchanan has also written extensively on the theory of the fiscal constitution. His work The Power to Tax: Analytical Foundations of a Fiscal Constitution (with Geoffrey Brennan) was ground breaking on how fiscal decisions are made. Buchanan's writings have also challenged traditional assumptions about the role of self interest in political decision making.

Public Choice theory has evolved into two branches – a normative branch which attempts to derive principles of an appropriately organized set of public decisions, and a positivist branch which attempts to develop predictive theories of behavior.

List of publications

• The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan by James M. Buchanan, at the Library of Economics and Liberty. Multi-volume work; copyrighted but free to read and access; fully searchable online. Includes:
• Public Principles of Public Debt: A Defense and Restatement, by James M. Buchanan, at the Library of Economics and Liberty
• The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy, by James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, at the Library of Economics and Liberty
• Public Finance in Democratic Process: Fiscal Institutions and Individual Choice, by James M. Buchanan, at the Library of Economics and Liberty
• The Demand and Supply of Public Goods, by James M. Buchanan, at the Library of Economics and Liberty
• Cost and Choice: An Inquiry in Economic Theory, by James M. Buchanan, at the Library of Economics and Liberty
• The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan, by James M. Buchanan, at the Library of Economics and Liberty
• Democracy in Deficit: The Political Legacy of Lord Keynes, by James M. Buchanan and Richard E. Wagner, at the Library of Economics and Liberty
• The Power to Tax: Analytical Foundations of a Fiscal Constitution, by Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan, at the Library of Economics and Liberty
• The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy, by Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan, at the Library of Economics and Liberty
• Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative: The Normative Vision of Classical Liberalism (2006)

References

• Kasper, Sherryl. The Revival of Laissez-Faire in American Macroeconomic Theory: A Case Study of Its Pioneers (2002) ch 6

See also

• Public Choice Theory
• Gordon Tullock
• Social contract
• The Trap (TV Documentary Series) Buchanan features in "The Trap", a BBC documentary.

External links

• Biography at GMU
• Biography of James M. Buchanan at the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics
• IDEAS/RePEc