About the Book
"A fine collection of essays exploring, and in many cases extending, Jim Buchanan's many contributions and insights to economic, political, and social theory."- Bruce Caldwell, Professor of Economics, Duke University, USA"The overwhelming impression the reader gets from this very fine collection is the extraordinary expanse of James Buchanan's work. Everyone interested in economics and related fields can profit mightily from this book."- Mario Rizzo, Professor of Economics, New York University, USA
This book explores the academic contribution of James Buchanan, who received the Nobel Prize for economics in 1986. Buchanan's receipt of the Prize is noteworthy because he was a maverick within the economics profession. In contrast to the preponderance of economists, Buchanan made little use of mathematics and no use of econometrics, preferring to used logic and language to insert his ideas into the scholarlycommunity. Moreover, his ideas extended the domain of economic inquiry along many paths that numerous economists subsequently pursued. Buchanan's scholarship brought economics and political science together under the rubric of public choice. He was also was a prime figure in bringing economic theory into closer contact with moral and social philosophy.This volume includes essays distributed across the extensive domain of Buchanan's scholarly contributions, reflecting the range of his scholarly interests. Chapters will examine Buchanan's scholarly work on public finance, social insurance, public debt, public choice, economic methodology, constitutional political economy, law and economics, and ethics and social theory. The book also examines Buchanan in relation to other prominent economists, both from the distant past and the recent past.
Table of Contents:
1. Who Was James M. Buchanan and Why is He Significant?- Richard E. Wagner.- Part I: Subjectivism and the Methodology of Political Economy.- 2. East Anglia, What Should Economists Do Now?- Robert Sugden.- 3. Duke, Starting from Where We Are: The Importance of the Status Quo in James Buchanan- Michael Munger.- 4. Brown, James Buchanan and the Properly Trained Economist- Peter J. Boettke, George Mason and Rosolino Candela.- 5. James Buchanan and the “New Economics of Order” Research Program- Stefan Kolev.- 6. George Mason, Emergence, Equilibrium, and Agent-based Modeling: Updating James Buchanan’s Democratic Political Economy- Abigail N. Devereaux, George Mason and Richard E. Wagner.- Part II: Public Finance and the Theory of the State.- 7. The Conflict between Constitutionally Constraining the State and Empowering the State to Provide Public Goods- Lawrence H. White.- 8. Fiscal Constitutions, Institutional Congruence, and the Organization of Governments- Charles Beat Blankart and David Ehmke.- 9. The Irrelevance of Balanced Budget Amendments- David Hebert.- 10. Subsidizing Health Insurance: Tax Illusion and Public Choice for a mostly Private Good- Mark V. Pauly.- 11. Inconsistencies in the Finance of Public Services: Government Responses to Excess Demand- Andrew Abbott and Philip Jones.- 12. The Unproductive Protective State: The U.S. Defense Sector as a Fiscal Commons- Christopher J. Coyne and Thomas K. Duncan.- 13. Contraception without Romance: The Entangled Political Economy of State and Federal Contraception Mandates- Marta Podemska-Mikluch and Gustavus Adolphus.- 14. Samaritan’s Dilemmas, Wealth Redistribution, and Polycentricity- Meg Tuszynski and Richard E. Wagner.- Part III: Collective Action and Constitutional Political Economy.- 15. Constitutional Reform: Promise and Reality- Dennis Mueller.- 16. Constitutional, Political, and Behavioral Feasibility- Alan Hamlin.- 17. Blockchain and Buchanan: Code as Constitution- Shruti Rajagopalan.- 18. Blockchains as Constitutional Orders- Chris Berg, Sinclair Davidson and Jason Potts.- 19. The Questionable Morality of Compromising the Influence of Public Choice by Embracing a “Nobel” Lie- J.R. Clark and Dwight R. Lee.-20. Beneficent Bullshit- Peter T. Leeson.- 21. Groups, Sorting, and Inequality in Constitutional Political Economy- Jayme Lemke.- 22. Votes, Vetoes, Voice, and Exit: Constitutional Protections in the work of James M. Buchanan and Vincent Ostrom- Roberta Herzberg.- 23. On the Definition and Nature of Fiscal Coercion- George Tridimas.- 24. Politics as Exchange in the Byzantine Empire- Adam Martin and James Ruhland.- Part IV: Ethics, Social Philosophy, and Liberal Political Economy.- 25. James M. Buchanan: Political; Economist, Consistent Individualist- Viktor Vanberg.- 26. A Public Choice Analysis of James M. Buchanan’s Constitutional Project- Randall Holcombe.- 27. Buchanan’s Social Contract Unveiled- Enrico Colombatto.- 28. Constitutional Design and Politics-as-Exchange: The Optimism of Public Choice- Georg Vanberg.- 29. Doing Liberal Political Economy: James M. Buchanan as Exemplar- Glenn L. Furton and Alexander W. Salter.- 30. Buchanan, Hayek, and the Limits of Constitutional Ambitions- Donald Boudreaux.- 31. James Buchanan and the Return to an Economics of Natural Equals- David M. Levy and Sandra J. Peart.- 32. From Highways to Clubs: On Buchanan and the Pricing of Public Goods- Alain Marciano.- Part V: Economic Theory as Social Theory.- 33. In Defence of (Some) Vainglory: The Advantages of Polymorphic Hobbesianism- Jerry Gaus.- 34. Toward a Rule-based Model of Human Choice: On the Nature of Homo Constitutionalus- Roger Congleton.- 35. The Constitution of Markets- Geoffrey Brennan and Hartmut Kliemt.- 36. The Extent of the Market and Ethics- Yong Yoon.- 37. Why Roving Bandits Settle Down: Club Theory and the Emergence of Government- Andrew T. Young.- 38. Rules vs. Discretion in Criminal Sentencing- Daniel D’Amico.- 39. Diagnosing the Electorate: James Buchanan in the Role of Political Economist- Solomon Stein.- 40. From Models to Experiments: James Buchanan and Charles Plott- Gil Hersch and Daniel Houser.- Part VI: Money, Debt, and the Rule of Law.- 41. Rules Versus Authorities: Buchanan and Simons and Fiscal Policy- Marianne Johnson.- 42. The Quest for Fiscal Rules- Lars Feld.- 43. The Irresistible Attraction of Public Debt- Vito Tanzi.- 44. Can there be such a thing as Legitimate Public Debt in a Democracy? De Viti de Marco and Buchanan Compared- Giuseppe Eusepi.- 45. Consequences of the Anachronism of Fractional Reserve Arrangements- Leonidas Zelmanovitz.- Part VII: Buchanan in Relation to Other Prominent Scholars.- 46. Italian Influences on Buchanan’s Research Program- Alain Marciano and Manuela Mosca.- 47. Paretian Fiscal Sociology- Michael McLure.- 48. Artefactual and Artisanship: James M. Buchanan and Vincent Ostrom at the Core and beyond the Boundaries of Public Choice- Paul Dragos Aligica.- 49. The Calculus of Consent and the Compound Republic- Robert Bish.- 50. Why James Buchanan Kept Frank Knight’s Picture on the Wall despite Fundamental Disagreements on Economics, Ethics, and Politics- Ross Emmett.
About the Author :
Richard E. Wagner is Holbert L. Harris Professor of Economics at George Mason University, USA. He is Senior Fellow of the Academic Advisory Board at the Independent Institute, the James Madison Institute for Public Policy Studies and the Virginia Institute for Public Policy. He was co-editor of the scholarly journal Constitutional Political Economy from 1989-1997, and he is currently a member of the editorial boards of Constitutional Political Economy, the Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice, and the Review of Austrian Economics. He was one of Buchanan's dissertation students, a co-author with Buchanan, and a faculty colleague for some 25 years.
Review :
"This volume is so broad in scope, so rich in fascinating reflections, so instructive that anybody should benefit from it who has a genuine, if critical, interest in the work of James M. Buchanan. On this basis, it should be a pleasure to enter an informed, open discussion." (Karen Horn, Constitutional Political Economy, Vol. 31, 2020)
