Public Finance and Public Choice: Two Contrasting Visions of the State

Business & Money

James M. Buchanan

Richard Abel Musgrave

Economics

MIT Press (MA)

Ethics and Economic Progress

Univ of Oklahoma Pr

Studies of public finance, as traditionally developed, have analyzed the effects of fiscal institutions on the market-choice behavior of individuals and firms, but this book takes a different approach.  It analyzes the effects of fiscal institutions on the political-choice behavior of individuals as they participate variously in the decision-making processes of democracies.What effect will the form of a new tax have on individuals' attitudes toward more or less public spending?  To what extent does the private sector--public sector mix depend on the way in which tax payments are made?  How do the various taxes affect the fiscal consciousness of individual citizens?  These are questions that have been ignored for the most part.  They are, nonetheless, important and worthy of examination.  This book is an attempt to provide some provisional answers.   By the use of simplified models of existing tax institutions, Buchanan predicts the effects that these exert on individual behavior in the area of political choice.  The relative effects of direct and indirect taxes, the "old tax--new tax" distinction, the effects of fiscal earmarking, the effects of unbalanced budgets -- these are a few of the topics examined.Before these questions can be fully answered, research must be conducted to find out just how much individuals know about the taxes they pay and the benefits they receive.  Comparatively little research of this kind has been completed, but the author devotes a chapter to a careful review of the present state of this sort of research.Individuals' choice among alternative fiscal institutions is examined in the second part of the book.  If given the opportunity, how would the individual choose to pay his or her taxes?  Progressive income taxes, excise taxes, and public debt are analyzed in terms of this question. Because of its interdisciplinary approach, this imaginative study will be of interest to both economists and political scientists.

Public Finance in Democratic Process: Fiscal Institutions and Individual Choice

University of North Carolina Press

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 Buchanan’s 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

The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty (The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan, Vol. 1)

Liberty Fund

The Calculus of Consent was co-authored by Buchanan with Gordon Tullock, with whom Buchanan collaborated on many books and academic enterprises throughout their careers. As Robert D. Tollison states in the foreword, [this book] is a radical departure from the way democracies conduct their business. The Calculus is already a book for the ages.” This classic work analyzes the political organization of a free society through the lens of the economic organization of society. The authors acknowledge their unease as economists in analyzing the political organization, but they take the risk of forging into unfamiliar territory because they believe the benefits of their perspective will bear much fruit. As the authors state, their objective in this book is to analyze the calculus of the rational individual when he is faced with questions of constitutional choice . . . .We examine the [choice] process extensively only with reference to the problem of decision-making rules.” The authors describe their approach as economic individualism.” They believe that economists have explored individual choice extensively in the market sector while social scientists have largely ignored the dynamics of individual decision-making in the dynamics of forming group action in the public sector. Written in the early 1960s, The Calculus of Consent has become a bulwark of the public choice movement for which James M. Buchanan is so justly famous. James M. Buchanan is an eminent economist who won the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986 and is considered one of the greatest scholars of liberty in the twentieth century. 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

The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan, Vol. 3)

Gordon Tullock

Commenting on his collaboration with Geoffrey Brennan on The Power to Tax, James M. Buchanan says that the book is demonstrable proof of the value of genuine research collaboration across national-cultural boundaries.” Buchanan goes on to say that The Power to Tax is informed by a single ideathe implications of a revenue-maximizing government.” Originally published in 1980, The Power to Tax was a much-needed answer to the tax revolts sweeping across the United States. It was a much-needed answer as well in the academic circles of tax theory, where orthodox public finance models were clearly inadequate to the needs at hand. The public-choice approach to taxation which Buchanan had earlier elaborated stood in direct opposition to public-finance orthodoxy. What Buchanan and Brennan constructed in The Power to Tax was a middle ground between the two. As Brennan writes in the foreword, The underlying motivating question was simple: Why not borrow the motivational assumptions standard in public-choice theory and put them together with assumptions about policy-maker discretion taken from public-finance orthodoxy?” The result was a controversial bookand a much misunderstood one as well. Looking back twenty years later, Brennan feels confirmed in the rightness of the theories he and Buchanan espoused, particularly in their unity with the public-choice tradition: The insistence on motivational symmetry is a characteristic feature of the public choice approach, and it is in this dimension that The Power to Tax and the orthodox public- finance approach diverge.” James M. Buchanan is an eminent economist who won the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986 and is considered one of the greatest scholars of liberty in the twentieth century. The entire series will include: 
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

POWER TO TAX, THE (Collected Works of James M Buchanan-Volume 9)

Geoffrey Brennan

This volume presents a collection of Buchanan’s most representative works in economic method and analysis. As Robert D. Tollison points out in his foreword, [Included] in this volume are some of [Buchanan’s] most often cited works on methodology, including papers reflecting his emphasis on the subjective nature of opportunity costs and the implications of this subjectivity for economic analysis.” The works collected in this volume also demonstrate Buchanan’s interest throughout his career in the ideas and issues posed by economic theory. Buchanan shows throughout this volume that he believes economic theory can help explain the world around us. Spanning nearly his entire fifty-year career, Buchanan’s writings in this volume exhibit a consistency of thought and belief as ideas recur from paper to paper, ever richer and more resonant. The thirty-six works represented here are grouped into the major categories: 1.The Practice and Method of Economic Theory 2.Competition and Entrepreneurship 3.The Theory of Monopoly 4.Input Prices 5.Opportunity Cost and Efficient Prices 6.Increasing Returns and the Work Ethic 7.Economic Theory in a Post-Socialist World Clearly, these papers as a whole reflect a broad range of issues and provide us with countless insights. More than this, they give us a picture of the theorist in his workshop. They acquaint us with what interests him and how he deals with important issues. In his conclusion to the opening essay, Is Economics the Science of Choice?” Buchanan typifies the richness of thought available throughout this volume: Modern economics, as practiced by professional scholars, embodies confusions that are fundamentally methodological. For myself, I advance no claim that my own thinking has yet fully rid itself of the paradigms of neoclassical orthodoxy.” James M. Buchanan is an eminent economist who won the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986 and is considered one of the greatest scholars of liberty in the twentieth century. The entire series will include: 
<a>Volume 1</a>: The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty <a>Volume 2</a>: Public Principles of Public Debt <a>Volume 3</a>: The Calculus of Consent <a>Volume 4</a>: Public Finance in Democratic Process <a>Volume 5</a>: The Demand and Supply of Public Goods <a>Volume 6</a>: Cost and Choice <a>Volume 7</a>: The Limits of Liberty <a>Volume 8</a>: Democracy in Deficit <a>Volume 9</a>: The Power to Tax <a>Volume 10</a>: The Reason of Rules <a>Volume 11</a>: Politics by Principle, Not Interest <a>Volume 12</a>: Economic Inquiry and Its Logic <a>Volume 13</a>: Politics as Public Choice <a>Volume 14</a>: Debt and Taxes <a>Volume 15</a>: Externalities and Public Expenditure Theory <a>Volume 16</a>: Choice, Contract, and Constitutions <a>Volume 17</a>: Moral Science and Moral Order <a>Volume 18</a>: Federalism, Liberty, and the Law <a>Volume 19</a>: Ideas, Persons, and Evennts

Economic Inquiry and Its Logic (The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan, Vol. 12)

This volume is a collection of sixteen essays on three general topics: the methodology of economics, the applicability of economic reasoning to political science and other social sciences, and the relevance of economics as moral philosophy. Several essays are published here for the first time, including "Professor Alchian on Economic Method," "Natural and Artifactual Man," and "Public Choice and Ideology." This book provides relatively easy access to a wide range of work by a moral and legal philosopher, a welfare economist who has consistently defended the primacy of the contractarian ethic, a public finance theorist, and a founder of the burgeoning subdiscipline of public choice. Buchanan's work has spawned a methodological revolution in the way economists and other scholars think about government and government activity. As a measure of recognition for his significant contribution, Dr. Buchanan was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Economics.

What Should Economists Do?

Liberty Fund, Inc.

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