| Chicago School of Economics | |
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James Buchanan at a panel discussion on his contributions to social philosophy and political economy in September 2010. |
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| Born | October 3, 1919 Murfreesboro, Tennessee, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Institution | George Mason University University of Virginia |
| Field | Public choice |
| 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 received 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. He is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute.
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Buchanan graduated from Middle Tennessee State Teachers College, now known as Middle Tennessee State University, in 1940. Buchanan, along with Nobel Prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus, each attended Middle Tennessee State University as either a student or a teacher. Buchanan 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.
Buchanan 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 is 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 ("Virginia Tech"), where he was affiliated with the Center for the Study of Public Choice (CSPC). In 1983, he followed CSPC to its new home at George Mason University.[1] In 2001 Buchanan was honoured with an honorary doctoral degree at Universidad Francisco Marroquín [2] due his contribution to economic theory.
Buchanan's work includes extensive writings on public finance, the public debt, voting, rigorous analysis of the theory of logrolling, macroeconomics, constitutional economics.[3] and libertarian theory.
Buchanan's important contribution to constitutionalism is his development of the sub-discipline of constitutional economics.[4] Buchanan rejects "any organic conception of the state as superior in wisdom, to the citizens of this state." This philosophical position forms the basis of constitutional economics. Buchanan believes that every constitution is created for at least several generations of citizens. Therefore, it must be able to balance interests of the state, society, and each individual.[5]
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