Synopses & Reviews
The thirty-one papers presented in this volume offer scholars and general readers alike a comprehensive introduction to the work of one of the greatest economists of the modern era. Many of Buchanan's most important essays are gathered in this inaugural volume of the twenty-volume series from Liberty Fund of his
Collected Works.
The essays are arranged thematically and so present a complete perspective on Buchanans work. The six sections include:
1. Introduction
2. Politics without Romance
3. Public Finance and Democratic Process
4. The Economist and Economic Order
5. Ethics and Economics
6. The Reason of Rules
The editors have focused on papers that Buchanan has written without collaboration and which present Buchanan's earlier, classic statements on crucial subjects rather than his subsequent elaborations which appear in later volumes in the series. Included, too, is Buchanan's Nobel address, "The Constitution of Economic Policy," and the text of the Nobel Committee's press release explaining why Buchanan was awarded the prize for Economics in 1986. The volume also includes Buchanan's autobiographical essay, "Better Than Plowing," in which he gives not only a brief account of his life, but also his own assessment of what is important, distinctive, and enduring in his work. The foreword by the three series editors will be valuable to all readers who wish to engage the challenging but epochal writings of the father of modern public choice theory.
The entire series includes:
Volume 1: The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty
Volume 2: Public Principles of Public Debt
Volume 3: The Calculus of Consent
Volume 4: Public Finance in Democratic Process
Volume 5: The Demand and Supply of Public Goods
Volume 6: Cost and Choice
Volume 7: The Limits of Liberty
Volume 8: Democracy in Deficit
Volume 9: The Power to Tax
Volume 10: The Reason of Rules
Volume 11: Politics by Principle, Not Interest
Volume 12: Economic Inquiry and Its Logic
Volume 13: Politics as Public Choice
Volume 14: Debt and Taxes
Volume 15: Externalities and Public Expenditure Theory
Volume 16: Choice, Contract, and Constitutions
Volume 17: Moral Science and Moral Order
Volume 18: Federalism, Liberty, and the Law
Volume 19: Ideas, Persons, and Events
Volume 20: Indexes
Table of Contents
Foreword xi The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Press Release 3 1. Introduction
Better than Plowing 11
What Should Economists Do? 28 2. Politics without Romance
Politics without Romance: A Sketch of Positive Public Choice Theory and Its Normative Implications 45
Politics, Policy, and the Pigovian Margins 60
Individual Choice in Voting and the Market 75
Social Choice, Democracy, and Free Markets 89
Rent Seeking and Profit Seeking 103 3. Public Finance and Democratic Process
The Pure Theory of Government Finance: A Suggested Approach 119
Taxation in Fiscal Exchange 133
Public Debt, Cost Theory, and the Fiscal Illusion 150
Keynesian Follies 164
Socialism Is Dead but Leviathan Lives On 179 4. The Economist and Economic Order
Positive Economics, Welfare Economics, and Political Economy 191
The Relevance of Pareto Optimality 210
Politics and Science: Reflections on Knight's Critique of Polanyi 230
Order Defined in the Process of Its Emergence 244
Natural and Artifactual Man 246
Rights, Efficiency, and Exchange: The Irrelevance of Transactions Cost 260 5. Ethics and Economics
The Foundations for Normative Individualism 281
The Justice of Natural Liberty 292
Ethical Rules, Expected Values, and Large Numbers 311
The Samaritan's Dilemma 329
The Supply of Labour and the Extent of the Market 346
Markets, States, and the Extent of Morals 360
The Ethics of Constitutional Order 368 6. The Reason of Rules
The Domain of Constitutional Economics 377
Predictability: The Criterion of Monetary Constitutions 396
Generality as a Constitutional Constraint 419
Before Public Choice 429
The Relatively Absolute Absolutes 442
The Constitution of Economic Policy 455 Appendixes
A. James M. Buchanan Biographical Data 471
B. Contents of the Collected Works of James M. Buchanan 478 Name Index 505 Subject Index 511