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Public Finance in Democratic Process: Fiscal Institutions and Individual Choice
Public Finance in Democratic Process is James M. Buchanan’s monumental work that outlines the dynamics of individual choice as it is displayed in the process of public finance.
Buchanan is perhaps nowhere more clearly a disciple of the great Swedish economist Knut Wicksell than he is in the underlying principles of this seminal work. Specifically, he elaborates on these three central Wicksellian themes:
1.Analysis of market failure in the provision of public goods.
2.The insistence on conceiving policy decisions as the outcome of political processes.
3.The necessity of treating the tax and expense sides of the budget as interconnected.
Echoing Wicksell’s antipathy to the “benevolent despot” model of government, Buchanan lays out in this book a starting point for modern public-choice analysis. Recognizing the pathbreaking work he is about to begin, Buchanan opens his preface by stating, “Fiscal theory is normally discussed in a frame of reference wholly different from that adopted in this book. This dramatic shift of emphasis . . . . requires that I consider the processes through which individual choices are transmitted, combined, and transformed into collective outcomes. Careful research in this area is in its infancy, and the necessary reliance on crude, unsophisticated models underscores the exploratory nature of the work.”
According to Geoffrey Brennan in the foreword, “Public Finance in Democratic Process is a work more hospitable to public finance orthodoxy and could be treated as an extension (albeit an important one) of the conventional approach.”
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
Buchanan is perhaps nowhere more clearly a disciple of the great Swedish economist Knut Wicksell than he is in the underlying principles of this seminal work. Specifically, he elaborates on these three central Wicksellian themes:
1.Analysis of market failure in the provision of public goods.
2.The insistence on conceiving policy decisions as the outcome of political processes.
3.The necessity of treating the tax and expense sides of the budget as interconnected.
Echoing Wicksell’s antipathy to the “benevolent despot” model of government, Buchanan lays out in this book a starting point for modern public-choice analysis. Recognizing the pathbreaking work he is about to begin, Buchanan opens his preface by stating, “Fiscal theory is normally discussed in a frame of reference wholly different from that adopted in this book. This dramatic shift of emphasis . . . . requires that I consider the processes through which individual choices are transmitted, combined, and transformed into collective outcomes. Careful research in this area is in its infancy, and the necessary reliance on crude, unsophisticated models underscores the exploratory nature of the work.”
According to Geoffrey Brennan in the foreword, “Public Finance in Democratic Process is a work more hospitable to public finance orthodoxy and could be treated as an extension (albeit an important one) of the conventional approach.”
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
- GenresEconomics
328 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1967
About the author
James M. Buchanan
133 books67 followersAmerican economist known for his work on public choice theory, for which in 1986 he received the Nobel Memorial Prize. Buchanan's work initiated research on how politicians' self-interest and non-economic forces affect government economic policy. He was a Member of the Board of Advisors of The Independent Institute, a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute, and professor at George Mason University.
Buchanan was the founder of a new Virginia school of political economy. He taught at the University of Virginia—where he founded the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression—UCLA, Florida State University, the University of Tennessee, and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, where he founded the Center for the Study of Public Choice (CSPC). In 1983 a conflict with Economics Department head Daniel M. Orr came to a head and Buchanan took the CSPC to its new home at George Mason University. In 1988 Buchanan returned to Hawaii for the first time since the War and gave a series of lectures later published by the University Press. In 2001 Buchanan received an honorary doctoral degree from Universidad Francisco Marroquín, in Guatemala City, Guatemala, for his contribution to economics.
Buchanan was the founder of a new Virginia school of political economy. He taught at the University of Virginia—where he founded the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression—UCLA, Florida State University, the University of Tennessee, and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, where he founded the Center for the Study of Public Choice (CSPC). In 1983 a conflict with Economics Department head Daniel M. Orr came to a head and Buchanan took the CSPC to its new home at George Mason University. In 1988 Buchanan returned to Hawaii for the first time since the War and gave a series of lectures later published by the University Press. In 2001 Buchanan received an honorary doctoral degree from Universidad Francisco Marroquín, in Guatemala City, Guatemala, for his contribution to economics.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 29, 2018
So deficits are a feature, and not a bug, of democracies because people can vote on expenditures without voting on how to pay for them.
And I *will* be a public choice scholar if it's the last thing I do.
And I *will* be a public choice scholar if it's the last thing I do.
Displaying 1 of 1 review