Buchanan, James M. 1919–

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Buchanan, James M. 1919–

(James McGill Buchanan)

PERSONAL:

Born October 3, 1919, in Murfreesboro, TN; son of James M. and Lila Buchanan; married Anne Bakke, October 5, 1945. Education: Middle Tennessee State College (now University), B.S., 1940; University of Tennessee, M.A., 1941; University of Chicago, Ph.D., 1948.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Blacksburg, VA. Office—Department of Economics, George Mason University, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030.

CAREER:

University of Tennessee, Knoxville, associate professor of economics, 1948-51; Florida State University, Tallahassee, professor of economics, 1951-56; University of Virginia, Charlottesville, professor of economics, 1956-62, Paul G. McIntyre Professor of Economics, 1962-68, department chair, 1956-62; University of California, Los Angeles, professor of economics, 1968-69; Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, university distinguished professor of economics and director of Center for Public Choice, 1969-83; George Mason University, university distinguished professor of economics and director of Center for Public Choice, beginning 1983. Military service: U.S. Naval Reserve, 1941-45; became lieutenant; awarded Bronze Star.

MEMBER:

American Economic Association (executive committee, 1966-68; vice president, 1971; distinguished fellow), American Academy of Arts and Sciences (fellow), Royal Economic Society, Southern Economic Association (president, 1963), Western Economic Association (president, 1983).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Fulbright research scholar, Italy, 1955-56; Ford Faculty research fellow, 1959-60; Fulbright visiting professor, Cambridge University, 1961-62; Dr.h.c., University of Giessen, 1982, and University of Zurich, 1984; Seidman Award, American Economic Association, 1984; Nobel Prize for economic science, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 1986, for work applying economic principles to political decision making.

WRITINGS:

(With C.L. Allen and M.R. Colberg) Prices, Income, and Public Policy, McGraw (New York, NY), 1954, 2nd edition, 1959.

Public Principles of Public Debt, Irwin (New York, NY), 1958.

The Public Finances, Irwin (New York, NY), 1960, 5th edition (with Marilyn R. Flowers), 1980.

Fiscal Theory and Political Economy, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, CA), 1960.

(With Gordon Tullock) The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1962.

Public Finance in Democratic Process, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 1966.

Public Debt in a Democratic Society, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (Washington, DC), 1967.

Demand and Supply of Public Goods, Rand McNally (Skokie, IL), 1969.

Cost and Choice, Markham (Cambridgeshire, England), 1970.

(With Nicos E. Devletoglou) Academia in Anarchy: An Economic Diagnosis, Basic Books (New York, NY), 1970.

(Editor, with Robert D. Tollison) Theory of Public Choice, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1972, revised edition published as The Theory of Public Choice II, 1984.

(Editor, with G.F. Thirlby) L.S.E. Essays on Cost, Weidenfeld & Nicolson for the London School of Economics and Political Science (London, England), 1973, New York University Press (New York, NY), 1981.

The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1975.

(With Richard E. Wagner) Democracy in Deficit: The Political Legacy of Lord Keynes, Academic Press (New York, NY), 1977.

Freedom in Constitutional Contract: Perspectives of a Political Economist, Texas A&M University Press (College Station, TX), 1978.

The Consequences of Mr. Keynes: An Analysis of the Misuse of Economic Theory for Political Profiteering, with Proposals for Constitutional Disciplines, Institute of Economic Affairs (Washington, DC), 1978.

(Contributor) The Economics of Politics, Institute of Economic Affairs (Washington DC), 1978.

(Editor, with Richard E. Wagner) Fiscal Responsibility in Constitutional Democracy, Nijhoff (Leiden, The Netherlands), 1978.

What Should Economists Do?, Liberty Fund (Indianapolis, IN), 1979.

(With Geoffrey Brennan) The Power to Tax: Analytical Foundations of a Fiscal Constitution, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1980.

(Editor, with Robert D. Tollison and Gordon Tullock) Toward a Theory of the Rent-Seeking Society, Texas A&M University (College Station, TX), 1980.

(With Geoffrey Brennan) Monopoly in Money and Inflation: The Case for a Constitution to Discipline Government, Institute of Economic Affairs (Washington, DC), 1981.

(With Geoffrey Brennan) The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1985.

Liberty, Market, and State: Political Economy in the 1980s, New York University Press (New York, NY), 1985.

(Editor, with Charles K. Rowley and Robert D. Tollison) Deficits, Blackwell (New York, NY), 1987.

Economics: Between Predictive Science and Moral Philosophy, compiled by and preface by Robert D. Tollison and Viktor J. Vanberg, Texas A&M University Press (College Station, TX), 1987.

Essays on the Political Economy, University of Hawaii Press (Honolulu, HI), 1989.

Explorations into Constitutional Economics, compiled by and preface by Robert D. Tollison and Viktor J. Vanberg, Texas A&M University Press (College Station, TX), 1989.

Constitutional Economics, Blackwell (Cambridge, MA), 1991.

The Economics and the Ethics of Constitutional Order, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1991.

Better than Plowing, and Other Personal Essays, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1992.

Property as a Guarantor of Liberty, Elgar (Brookfield, VT), 1993.

Ethics and Economic Progress, University of Oklahoma (Norman, OK), 1994.

(Editor, with Yong J. Yoon) The Return to Increasing Returns, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1994.

Post-Socialist Political Economy: Selected Essays, Elgar (Lyme, NH), 1997.

(With Roger D. Congleton) Politics by Principle, not Interest: Toward Nondiscriminatory Democracy, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1998.

(With Richard A. Musgrave) Public Finance and Public Choice: Two Contrasting Visions of the State, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 1999.

The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty, Liberty Fund (Indianapolis, IN), 1999.

Politics as Public Choice, Liberty Fund (Indianapolis, IN), 2000.

Economic Inquiry and Its Logic, Liberty Fund (Indianapolis, IN), 2000.

Debt and Taxes, Liberty Fund (Indianapolis, IN), 2000.

Choice, Contract, and Constitutions, Liberty Fund (Indianapolis, IN), 2001.

Externalities and Public Expenditure Theory, Liberty Fund (Indianapolis, IN), 2001.

Moral Science and Moral Order, Liberty Fund (Indianapolis, IN), 2001.

Federalism, Liberty, and the Law, Liberty Fund (Indianapolis, IN), 2001.

Ideas, Persons, and Events, Liberty Fund (Indianapolis, IN), 2001.

(Selector) Landmark Papers in Economics, Politics, and Law, Elgar (Northampton, MA), 2002.

The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan: Indexes, Liberty Fund (Indianapolis, IN), 2002.

The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy, Liberty Fund (Indianapolis, IN), 2004.

Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative: The Normative Vision of Classical Liberalism, Edward Elgar (Northampton, MA), 2005.

Economics from the Outside In: "Better than Plowing" and Beyond, Texas A&M University Press (College Station, TX), 2007.

Contributor of articles to professional journals.

SIDELIGHTS:

Since being awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize for economic science, James M. Buchanan has found himself at the center of a debate on the significance of his theories and their impact on the field of economics. Buchanan's theory of public choice, the work that earned him the Nobel, involves combining politics and economics in such a way as to make for new subgenres within each of the disciplines. To overcome the forces pushing the U.S. federal government toward higher and higher deficits, Buchanan and his supporters have in recent years lobbied in favor of a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget.

One tenet that Buchanan has adapted from traditional economic theory helps anticipate the behavior of policymakers. Buchanan has found, noted Barbara Rudolph in Time, "that politicians and public servants act primarily to promote their own self-interest, not to serve some higher public good [the accepted view of some theories]. They behave … much like consumers in a marketplace." Buchanan has examined the role of the politician and the relationship between politics and the economy in over twenty books and numerous articles.

One possible variation of the game is the one Buchanan and his supporters see in practice. The desire of politicians to be reelected directs them toward implementing higher spending limits and lower taxes, which, while promoting the growth of the economy, results in a national deficit. For adherents to the theory of public choice, the solution to federal budget deficits is to change the rules governing the players. "We are now seeking to reimpose constitutional limits on government over and beyond those exercised through democratic electorial constraints," wrote Buchanan. He added that "public choice theory offers an analytical setting that allows us to discuss genuine reconstruction in our constitutions that may be made without major social costs."

Within some segments of the economics community, response to Buchanan's selection as Nobel winner has been less than enthusiastic. The criticism leveled against Buchanan includes charges that his contribution to the field has been too recent and too limited and he has, therefore, had little impact on economic thinking. Another complaint is that his theories are obvious; they are nothing more than common sense. Assar Lindbeck, chair of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences committee responsible for awarding the Nobel Prize in economics, dismissed such criticism, pointing out that Buchanan has been working significantly in his field since 1949. National Review contributor David R. Henderson remarked: "In fact, Buchanan's impact on how economists—and not just free-market economists—think about government has been huge."

Acceptance of the public choice theory by the U.S. government, Buchanan's supporters believe, demonstrates what may be a fundamental shift in economic policy, away from the approach first advocated by John Maynard Keynes in the 1920s—the approach that over the past sixty years has come to dominate economic thinking. Keynes doubted the free market's capacity to solve economic dilemmas and called instead for government intervention through spending and taxation to fine tune the economy. The threat of a growing federal deficit and the perceived inability of the government to check its growth has enhanced the esteem accorded the public choice theory. Henderson maintained that Buchanan's theories are not simply a restatement of previous arguments against Keynesian economics. "By undertaking a systematic analysis of political incentives, Buchanan and his colleagues are making a more fundamental critique of government intervention than the usual free-market economist's critique."

Buchanan's influence on policymakers such as Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, coauthor of the Gramm-Rudman Law, and members of the Reagan administration was also used to criticize his Nobel selection. Paul Craig Roberts declared in Business Week that criticism of this sort serves only as an indication of the prejudice held by academe and the media against conservative ideology. "Buchanan's work is a special threat to liberals," he added, "because it raises questions about the basis of their justification of big government."

The debate aside, some critics believed that Buchanan's recognition by the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences will serve not only as an appreciation of the economist's past efforts, but it will also have a positive effect on future related studies, particularly interdisciplinary studies that include economics, political sciences, and other social sciences.

In Buchanan's autobiographical Better than Plowing, and Other Personal Essays, twelve essays address different influences on the course of his career. Buchanan combines moral philosophy with economic theory to create a picture of his intellectual life, beginning with his early days growing up in Tennessee and focusing on the early education that set him on his intellectual path. He then goes on to address how the experiences of his grandfather and his father helped him formulate his opinions regarding what drives a person to excel and what circumstances can cause a dulling of motivation. Buchanan holds up this behavior as a model for his theory of economics as applied to government bodies, and links it to his rationale that just because an institution is meant to lack self-interest, this does not mean that will actually be the case. He continues in this fashion, addressing the major experiences and events in his life, including his time in the navy, the influence of Frank Knight on his theory of economics, his experiences in Italy and how they affected his outlook, and a host of other periods in his life, each of which helped form not just his personality but also his intellectual outlook. Kenneth Silber, writing for Commentary, remarked of Buchanan: "From unlikely origins, he emerged to change the nature of economic theory, and to exert an as-yet-unconsummated influence on public policy." Gordon L. Brady, in a review for the Southern Economic Journal, observed that "for Buchanan, his systematic approach defines him: his intellectual endeavors are not merely an escape from physical labor, rather the fact that he places a higher value on approach over outcome serves as a model from which to apply his personal values to life's puzzles and hence truth."

Ethics and Economic Progress is a collection of six essays, five of them new, that discuss the influence of personal tastes and preferences on the ethical norms that people apply to various situations and that go on to affect economic progress on the whole. An example of this is the Puritan work ethic and the accompanying emphasis that is placed upon saving money. This drawing of income and then hoarding of the resulting payments does little to stimulate economic growth, as that requires the money to be recycled through expenditure, not just for necessities but for luxury items. Doug Brown, writing for the Social Science Journal, noted that this attitude is not in keeping with the modern emphasis on reducing one's carbon footprint. He wrote: "What sustainability requires is that we internalize a new ethic that causes us to restrict our wants, not expand them or assume their unlimitedness. Such an ethic also requires a commitment to global redistribution of resources and power and a commitment to global social justice. Buchanan overlooks all of this debate."