Bibliography
See his The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (1962).
James M. Buchanan
| Columbia Encyclopedia: James McGill Buchanan |
Buchanan, James McGill, 1919-, American economist, b. Murfreesboro, Tenn., Ph.D. Univ. of Chicago, 1948. A professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute (1969-83) and George Mason Univ. (1983-), he was awarded the 1986 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his "public choice" theory that analyzes economic and political decision making.
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James Buchanan achieved prominence as a statesman and as the fifteenth president of the United States.
Buchanan was born April 23, 1791, near Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. A graduate of Dickinson College in 1809, Buchanan was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1812 before serving a tour of duty in the militia during the War of 1812. After the war, he entered politics and joined the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 1814.
In 1821 Buchanan began his career in federal politics, representing Pennsylvania in the U.S. House of Representatives until 1831. Later that year, he extended his interests to the field of foreign service and performed the duties of U.S. minister to Russia for a two-year period. He returned to Congress in 1834 and represented Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate for the next eleven years. From 1845 to 1849, he served as U.S. secretary of state and reentered foreign service in 1853 as U.S. minister to Great Britain until 1856.
Buchanan became unpopular in 1854 with his involvement in the creation of the Ostend Manifesto, which provided for the purchase by the United States of Cuba from Spain; if Spain refused to sell, the manifesto gave the United States the right to seize the country forcibly. Cuba would then become a slave state, which was viewed favorably by Southerners, but which met with vehement opposition by abolitionists. The manifesto was eventually rejected by the U.S. Department of State.
As a presidential candidate in 1857, Buchanan adopted a moderate attitude toward slavery and worked to establish a balance between the proslavery forces and the abolitionists. He believed that slavery was immoral, but that the Constitution provided for the protection of the practice in areas where it already existed. New states, he believed, should have the right to choose whether to be free or slave.
He won great support from the South, and after his election in 1857, Buchanan unsuccessfully attempted to reconcile the strife between the warring factions. He again advocated the acquisition of Cuba and favored the admission of Kansas as a slave state, which earned him disfavor with the northern free states. The strife between North and South continued, and Buchanan was unable to prevent the secession of South Carolina that led to the outbreak of the Civil War. He opposed secession but believed that he did not possess the power to compel states to remain faithful to the Union. When Abraham Lincoln succeeded Buchanan as president in 1861 the country was ready for civil war. Buchanan retired to Pennsylvania where he died June 1, 1868, in Lancaster.
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For other persons named James Buchanan, see James Buchanan (disambiguation).
| Chicago School of Economics | |
|---|---|
| Birth | October 3, 1919 Murfreesboro, Tennessee |
| Nationality |  United States |
| Field | Macroeconomics |
| Alma mater | University of Chicago University of Tennessee State Teachers College, Murfreesboro |
| Influences | Frank Knight Knut Wicksell |
| Contributions | Public choice theory |
| Awards | Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (1986) |
| Information at IDEAS/RePEc | |
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James McGill Buchanan, Jr. (born October 3, 1919) is an American economist known for his work on public choice theory, for which he won the 1986 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Buchanan's work initiated research on how politicians' self-interest and non-economic forces affect government economic policy.
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Biography
Buchanan graduated from State Teachers College, Murfreesboro in 1940. He completed his M.S. from the University of Tennessee in 1941. He spent the war years on the staff of Admiral Nimitz in Honolulu, and it is during that time he met and married his wife Anne.
He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1948 where he was much influenced by Frank H. Knight. It was also at Chicago that he read for the first time and found enlightening the work of Knut Wicksell. Photographs of Knight and Wicksell have hung from his office-walls ever since.
Buchanan has been the founder of a new Virginia school of political economy. He was 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]). In 1983 he moved to George Mason University with the Center to its new home at GMU.[1]
Buchanan's work includes extensive writings on public finance, the public debt, voting, rigorous analysis of the theory of logrolling, macroeconomics, and libertarian theory.
List of publications
- The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan by James M. Buchanan, at the Library of Economics and Liberty. Twenty-volume work, copyrighted but nine of the 20 volumes are free to read and access; fully searchable online. Includes:
- A list of Buchanan's Publications from 1949 to 1986 can be found at The Scandinavian Journal Of Economics, 1987, Vol. 39. No. 1, pp. 17-37.
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- 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
- Complete 20-volume list of The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan by James M. Buchanan, at the publisher, Liberty Fund.
- 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)
See also
- Public Choice Theory
- Gordon Tullock
- Social contract
- The Trap (TV Documentary Series) Buchanan features in "The Trap", a BBC documentary.
References
- Kasper, Sherryl. The Revival of Laissez-Faire in American Macroeconomic Theory: A Case Study of Its Pioneers (2002) ch 6
- Buchanan, James M. Better than Plowing and Other Personal Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992)
- Pittard, Homer. The First Fifty Years (Murfreesboro, TN: Middle Tennessee State College, 1961) pp. 136,173
- Anthony B. Atkinson, 'James M. Buchanan's Contributions to Economics', The Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 1987, Vol. 89, No. 1, pp. 5-15.
External links
- Biography at GMU
- YouTube Reflections on the Life and Work of James Buchanan
- Biography of James M. Buchanan at the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics
- IDEAS/RePEc
- Inaugural James M. Buchanan Lecture 2006 'The Hobbes Problem: From Machiavelli to Buchanan' by Deirdre McCloskey.
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