NationMaster - Encyclopedia: James M. Buchanan

James McGill Buchanan Jr. (born October 3, 1919 in Murfreesboro, Tennessee) is an American economist most renowned for his work on public choice theory, for which he won the 1986 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. He originally graduated from Middle Tennessee Normal School in 1940. He has long been professor at George Mason University, and is a central figure in the Virginia school of political economy. He has also held teaching positions at the University of Virginia (founding the Thomas Jefferson center), UCLA, and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute (with the Center for the Study of Public Choice). He moved with the center to its new home at GMU. His work in economics included a rigorous analysis of the theory of logrolling. James Buchanan can mean: James Buchanan, 15th president of the United States James Buchanan, 1st Baron Woolavington, British businessman and whisky producer James M. Buchanan, American economist James S. Buchanan, educator and fourth president of the University of Oklahoma Category: ... October 3 is the 276th day of the year (277th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1919 (MCMXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar). ... Downtown Murfreesboro, Tennessee Murfreesboro is a city in Rutherford County, Tennessee, United States. ... Alan Greenspan, former chairman, United States Federal Reserve. ... Public choice theory is a branch of economics that studies the decision-making behavior of voters, politicians and government officials from the perspective of economic theory, namely game theory and decision theory. ... 1986 (MCMLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences (Swe. ... Middle Tennessee State University (founded September 11, 1911, and commonly abbreviated as MTSU) is an American university located in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. ... 1940 (MCMXL) was a leap year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1940 calendar). ... George Mason University, also known as GMU or simply Mason, is a large public university in the United States. ... The Virginia school of political economy is a term applied to a school of economic thought centred on universities in Virginia, most notably George Mason University, Virginia Tech, and the University of Virginia, and mainly focusing on public choice theory and law and economics. ... Logrolling is a colorful phrase used to describe trading of votes by legislative members to obtain passage of actions of interest to each legislative member. ...

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. But its method, conceptual apparatus, and analytics "are derived, essentially, from the discipline that has as its subject the economic organization of such a society." The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy is a book written by economists James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock in 1962. ... Gordon Tullock (born February 13, 1922 in Rockford, Illinois) is currently professor of law and economics at the George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia. ... Public choice theory is a branch of economics that studies the decision-making behavior of voters, politicians and government officials from the perspective of economic theory. ... Face-to-face trading interactions on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor. ... The Politics series Politics Portal This box: Political Science is the field concerning the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behaviour. ...

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. Geoffrey Brennan is currently a professor of Philosophy at both the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University in the Department of Philosophy. ...

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.

Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative: The Normative Vision of Classical Liberalism (2006) Richard E. Wagner (born April 28, 1941) is a professor of economics at George Mason University. ...

References

See Also

The Trap (TV Documentary Series) Buchanan features in "The Trap", a BBC documentary. The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom is a BBC documentary series by British filmmaker Adam Curtis, well known for other documentaries including The Century of the Self and The Power of Nightmares. ...

External links

Nobel Prize in Economics: Laureates (1976-2000)

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1976: Friedman | 1977: Ohlin, Meade | 1978: Simon | 1979: Schultz, Lewis | 1980: Klein | 1981: Tobin | 1982: Stigler | 1983: Debreu | 1984: Stone | 1985: Modigliani | 1986: Buchanan | 1987: Solow | 1988: Allais | 1989: Haavelmo | 1990: Markowitz, Miller, Sharpe | 1991: Coase | 1992: Becker | 1993: Fogel, North | 1994: Harsanyi, Nash, Selten | 1995: Lucas | 1996: Mirrlees, Vickrey | 1997: Merton, Scholes | 1998: Sen | 1999: Mundell | 2000: Heckman, McFadden The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel[1] (Swedish: Sveriges Riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne), commonly called the Nobel Prize in Economics, or more acurately the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, is a prize awarded each year for outstanding intellectual... Winners of the Nobel Prize are scientists, writers and peacemakers who have been awarded in their field of endeavour, and who are known collectively as either Nobel laureates or Nobel Prize winners. ... Milton Friedman (July 31, 1912 â€“ November 16, 2006) was an American economist and public intellectual who made major contributions to the fields of macroeconomics, microeconomics, economic history and statistics while advocating laissez-faire capitalism. ... Bertil Ohlin (April 23, 1899 â€“ August 3, 1979), was a Swedish economist and winner of the 1977 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. ... James Edward Meade (June 23, 1907, Swanage, Dorset â€“ December 22, 1995, Cambridge) was an English economist and winner of the 1977 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel jointly with the Norwegian Bertil Ohlin for their Pathbreaking contribution to the theory of international trade and... Herbert Alexander Simon (June 15, 1916 â€“ February 9, 2001) was an American political scientist whose research ranged across the fields of cognitive psychology, computer science, public administration, economics, management, and philosophy of science and a professor, most notably, at Carnegie Mellon University. ... Theodore Schultz, the 1979 winner (jointly with Arthur Lewis) of the Bank of Sweden Prize in the Economic Sciences (also known as the Nobel Prize in Economics) was born 1902 in the United States. ... Sir William Arthur Lewis (January 23, 1915 â€“ June 15, 1991) was a Saint Lucian economist well known for his contributions in the field of economic development. ... Lawrence Robert Klein (born September 14, 1920) is an American economist. ... For the convicted Republican political operative, see James Tobin (political operative). ... George Joseph Stigler (1911 - 1991) was a U.S. economist. ... Gerard Debreu was a naturalized US citizen from France Gerard Debreu (July 4, 1921 â€“ December 31, 2004) was a French economist and mathematician (In July 1975, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States). ... Sir John Richard Nicholas Stone (August 30, 1913 â€“ December 6, 1991) was an eminent British economist who in 1984 received the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for developing an accounting model that could be used to track economic activities on a national and... Franco Modigliani (June 18, 1918 â€“ September 25, 2003) was an Italian-American economist at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1985. ... Robert Merton Solow (born August 23, 1924) is an American economist particularly known for his work on the theory of economic growth. ... Maurice Allais (born May 31, 1911) was the 1988 winner of The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for his pioneering contributions to the theory of markets and efficient utilization of resources. ... Trygve Magnus Haavelmo (13 December 1911 â€“ 26 July 1999), born in Skedsmo, Norway, was an influential economist with main research interests centered on the fields of econometrics and economics theory. ... Harry Max Markowitz (born August 24, 1927) is an influential economist at City University of New York and winner of the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 1990. ... Merton Howard Miller (May 16, 1923 - June 3, 2000) won the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 1990, along with Harry Markowitz and William Sharpe. ... William Forsyth Sharpe (born June 16, 1934) is Professor of Finance, Emeritus at Stanford Universitys Graduate School of Business and the winner of the 1990 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. ... Ronald Coase (born December 29, 1910) is a British economist. ... National Science Medal award ceremony, 2000 Gary Stanley Becker (born December 2, 1930) is an American economist. ... Robert William Fogel (born July 1, 1926) is an American economic historian and scientist, and winner (with Douglass North) of the 1993 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. ... Douglass Cecil North (born November 5, 1920) is co-recipient of the 1993 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. ... John Charles Harsanyi (Hungarian: HarsÃ¡nyi JÃ¡nos) (May 29, 1920 â€“ August 9, 2000) was a Hungarian-Australian-American business and economics professor who contributed to the study of game theory in mathematics by developing the quite revolutionary analysis of games of incomplete information, so-called Bayesian games. ... This article does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Reinhard Selten (born October 5, 1930) is a German economist. ... Robert Emerson Lucas, Jr. ... James Alexander Mirrlees (born July 5, 1936, Minnigaff, Scotland) is a Scottish economist and winner of the 1996 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. ... William Vickrey (June 21, 1914, Victoria, British Columbia - October 11, 1996, New York State) was a Columbia University professor, who was awarded the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. ... Robert C. Merton (born July 31, 1944), a leading scholar in the field of finance, was one of three men who, in the early 1970s, developed the mathematics of the stock options markets. ... Myron S. Scholes (born July 1, 1941) is one of the authors of the famous Black-Scholes equation. ... Amartya Sen Amartya Kumar Sen CH (Hon) (Bengali: Ã”morto Kumar Shen) (born 3 November 1933 in Santiniketan, India), is an Indian philosopher, economist and a winner of the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences (Nobel Prize for Economics) in 1998, for his work on famine, human development theory, welfare... Robert Alexander Mundell CC (born October 24, 1932) is a professor of economics at Columbia University. ... James Heckman (born April 19, 1944) is an economist at the University of Chicago. ... Daniel L. McFadden (born July 29, 1937) is an econometrician who won (jointly with James Heckman) the 2000 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for his development of theory and methods for analyzing discrete choice. He is currently the E. Morris Cox Professor of...

Complete List | Laureates (1969-1975) | Laureates (2001- )