Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T11:17:07.824Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

JAMES M. BUCHANAN, CHICAGO, AND POST-WAR PUBLIC FINANCE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2014

Marianne Johnson
Marianne Johnson*
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Email: johnsonm@uwosh.edu.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper examines James Buchanan’s earliest writings within the context of post-WWII public finance theory and his education at Chicago. Public choice scholars have long recognized their ties to Chicago, but few have examined Chicago’s role in serving as the primordial soup for Buchanan’s later work in public choice. Thus, we know very little about the subdiscipline of public finance at Chicago and its institutional and intellectual traditions in the immediate post-war period. As the influence of Frank Knight, price theory, and catallactics on Buchanan have been well explored, the focus here is on Buchanan’s graduate training in public finance, the departmental emphasis on product differentiation of ideas, and the general acceptance in ‘Old Chicago School’ economics of the importance of institutions and institutional design. I find that while he maintained a high degree of intellectual affinity with Chicago economics generally, Buchanan broke decisively with orthodox public finance (including that taught at Chicago) on several substantive issues early in his career, including the importance of expenditure theory and the relevance of the benefit principle and voluntary exchange.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , December 2014 , pp. 479 - 497
Copyright
Copyright © The History of Economics Society 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Backhaus, Jurgen G., and Wagner, Richard E.. 2005. “Continental Public Finance: Mapping and Recovering a Tradition.” Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice 23 (1–2): 43–67.Google Scholar
Blough, Roy. 1937. “Review.” Journal of Political Economy 45 (4): 546–548.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blough, Roy. 1944. “Conflict and Harmony in Taxation.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 88 (1): 22–28.Google Scholar
Brady, Gordon L. 2007. “The Chicago Roots of the Virginia School.” In Emmett, R., ed., The Elgar Companion to the Chicago School of Economics. New York: Edward Elgar, pp. 207–233.Google Scholar
Brennan, Geoffrey. 2004. “Life in the Putty-Knife Factory.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 63 (1): 75–104.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M. 1948. “Fiscal Equity in a Federal State.” PhD dissertation, University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M. 1949. “The Pure Theory of Government Finance, A Suggested Approach.” Journal of Political Economy 57 (6): 496–505.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M. 1950. “Federalism and Fiscal Equity.” American Economic Review 40 (4): 583–599.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M. 1951a. “Knut Wicksell on Marginal Cost Pricing.” Southern Economic Journal 18 (2): 173–178.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M. 1951b. “Fiscal Equity and the Unequal Treatment of Unequals: A Rejoinder.” Journal of Political Economy 59 (4): 358–359.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M. 1952a. “Federal Grants and Resource Allocation.” Journal of Political Economy 60 (3): 208–217.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M. 1952b. “Wicksell on Fiscal Reform: Comment.” American Economic Review 42 (4): 599–602.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M. 1952c. “Federal Grants and Resource Allocation: A Reply.” Journal of Political Economy 60 (6): 536–538.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M. 1954. “Individual Choice in Voting and the Market.” Journal of Political Economy 62 (4): 334–343.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M. 1967. Public Finance in Democratic Process. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M. 1987. “The Constitution of Economic Policy.” American Economic Review 77 (3): 243–250.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M. 1992. Better than Plowing and Other Personal Essays. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M. 1999. “Origins, Experience, and Ideas: A Retrospective Assessment.” In Buchanan, J. and Musgrave, R., Public Finance and Public Choice: Two Contrasting Visions of the State. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 11–28 and discussion 51–62.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M. 2007. Economics from the Outside. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M. 2010. “Chicago School Thinking: Old and New.” Preliminary Draft, Summer Institute for the Preservation of the History of Economic Thought, Richmond, Virginia, June 20, 2010.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M., and Tullock, Gordon. 1962. Calculus of Consent: Legal Foundations of Constitutional Democracy. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Burgin, Angus. 2007. “A Prehistory of the Chicago School.” Rethinking the Chicago School Conference, University of Notre Dame (September).Google Scholar
Emmett, Ross. 2007. “Oral History and the Historical Reconstruction of Chicago Economics.” In Weintraub, E. Roy and Forget, Evelyn, eds., Economists’ Lives: Biography and Autobiography in the History of Economics. History of Political Economy 39 (supplement): 172–192.Google Scholar
Emmett, Ross. 2009. Frank Knight and the Chicago School in American Economics. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Emmett, Ross. 2011. “Sharpening the Tools in the Workshop: The Workshop System and the Chicago School’s Success.” In Van Horn, R., Mirowski, P., and Stapleford, T., eds., Building Chicago Economics: New Perspectives on the History of America’s Most Powerful Economics Program. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 95–115.Google Scholar
Freedman, Craig. 2010. “South Side Blues: An Oral History of the Chicago School.” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 32 (4): 495–530.Google Scholar
Froman, Lewis A. 1942. “Graduate Students in Economics 1904–1940.” American Economic Review 32 (4): 817–826.Google Scholar
Froman, Lewis A. 1952. “Graduate Students in Economics.” American Economic Review 42 (4): 602–608.Google Scholar
Groves, Harold. 1939. Financing Government. New York: Henry Holt & Co.Google Scholar
Hammond, Claire, and Hammond, Daniel J.. 2006. Making Chicago Price Theory: Friedman–Stigler Correspondence, 1945–1957. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hicks, Ursula K. 1934. “Taxation and Production: The Wicksell Analysis.” The Review of Economic Studies 2 (1): 18–30.Google Scholar
Johnson, Marianne. 2014. “American Academic Public Finance: The First Fifty Years.” History of Political Economy, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Johnson, Marianne. 2005. “Wicksell’s Unanimity Rule for Public Goods: Buchanan’s Dominance Considered.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 64 (4): 1049–1071.Google Scholar
Kaplan, Norman Maurice. Papers, Box 1, Folder 5, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.Google Scholar
Knight, Frank. 1924. “Some Fallacies in the Interpretation of Social Cost.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 38: 582–606.Google Scholar
Koopmans, Tjalling. 1947. “Measurement Without Theory.” Review of Economics and Statistics 29 (3): 161–172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lampman, Robert. 1993. Economists at Wisconsin: 1892–1992. Madison, WI: The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.Google Scholar
Leland, Simeon E. 1930. “The Relations of Federal, State, and Local Finance.” Proceedings, National Tax Association XXIII: 94–106.Google Scholar
Less, Julie. 2012. Graduate Student Affairs Administrator for Economics. Email to Marianne Johnson, March 6.Google Scholar
Lindahl, Erik. 1919. Die Gerechtigkeit der Besteuerung. Lund.Google Scholar
McFadden, Robert D. 2013. “James M. Buchanan, Economic Scholar and Nobel Laureate, Dies at 93.” New York Times (January 9): online. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/business/economy/james-m-buchanan-economic-scholar-dies-at-93.html?pagewanted=all. Accessed July 29, 2104.Google Scholar
Meadowcroft, John. 2011. James M. Buchanan. New York: Continuum International Publishing.Google Scholar
Medema, Steven G. 2000. “Related Disciplines: The Professionalization of Public Choice Analysis.” The History of Applied Economics: History of Political Economy 32 (Supplement): 289–323.Google Scholar
Medema, Steven G. 2011. “Public Choice and the Notion of Creative Communities.” History of Political Economy 43 (1): 225–246.Google Scholar
Mehrotra, Ajay. 2007. “From Berlin to Baltimore: German Historicism and the American Income Tax, 1877–1913.” In Nuetzenadel, A. and Strupp, C., eds., Taxation, State and Civil Society in Germany and the United States. Baden-Baden: Nomos, pp. 167–184.Google Scholar
Mehrotra, Ajay. 2014. Sharing the Burden: Law, Politics, and the Making of the Modern American Fiscal State, 1877–1929. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mosca, Manuela. 2011. Una storia degna di memoria, Antonio de Viti de Marco. Edited by Mosca, Manuela. Milano: Bruno Mondadori.Google Scholar
Moss, Laurence. 2003. “The Seligman–Edgeworth Debate about the Analysis of Tax Incidence.” History of Political Economy 35 (3): 205–240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mullarkey, Colleen. 2012. Dissertation Office, University of Chicago. Email to Marianne Johnson, March 6.Google Scholar
Musgrave, Richard. 1939. “The Voluntary Exchange Theory of Public Economy.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 53 (2): 213–237.Google Scholar
Musgrave, Richard. 1941. “The Planning Approach in Public Economy: A Reply.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 55 (2): 319–324.Google Scholar
Peck, Jamie. 2011. “Orientation: In Search of the Chicago School.” In Van Horn, R., Mirowski, P., and Stapleford, T., eds., Building Chicago Economics. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. xxv–lii.Google Scholar
Ross, Dorothy. 1991. The Origins of American Social Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rutherford, Malcolm. 2011. The Institutionalist Movement in American Economics, 1918–1947. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samuels, Warren J. 2005. “F. Taylor Ostrander’s Notes on Henry Simons’s Course on Public Finance, Economics 360, University of Chicago, 1933–1934.” Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology 23B: 241–301.Google Scholar
Shoup, Carl. 1937. Facing the Tax Problem: A Survey of Taxation in the United States and a Program for the Future. New York: Twentieth Century Fund.Google Scholar
Simons, Henry C. 1934. A Positive Program for Laissez Faire. Public Policy Pamphlet No. 15, ed. Gideonse, H. D.. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Simons, Henry C. 1937a. “Review of Facing the Tax Problem: A Survey of Taxation in the United States and a Program for the Future by Carl Shoup, Roy Blough, Mabel Newcomer.” Journal of Political Economy 45 (4): 532–535.Google Scholar
Simons, Henry C. 1937b. “Review of the First Principles of Public Finance, by Antonio de Viti de Marco.” American Economic Review 45 (October): 712–717.Google Scholar
Simons, Henry C. 1938. Personal Income Taxation: The Definition of Income as a Problem of Fiscal Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Simons, Henry C. 1948. Economic Policy for a Free Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Simons, Henry C. 1950. Federal Tax Reform. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Simons, Henry C. Papers, Box 1, Folder 43. Special Collections, Research Center, University of Chicago Library.Google Scholar
Stigler, George. 1987. “Frank Hyneman Knight.” In Eatwell, J., Milgate, M. and Newman, P., eds., New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Vol. 3. New York: Stockton Press, pp. 55–59.Google Scholar
Uhr, Carl. 1951. “Knut Wicksell—A Centennial Evaluation.” American Economic Review 41 (5): 829–860.Google Scholar
University of Chicago Annual Register. 1940–1949. Chicago: University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Van Horn, Robert, and Mirowski, Philip. 2009. “The Rise of the Chicago School of Economics.” In Mirowski, P. and Plehwe, D., eds., The Road from Mont Pelerin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 139–180.Google Scholar
Van Overveldt, Johan. 2007. The Chicago School: How the University of Chicago Assembled the Thinkers Who Revolutionized Economics and Business. Chicago: Agate.Google Scholar
Wagner, Richard. 1988. “The Calculus of Consent: A Wicksellian Retrospective.” Public Choice 56 (February): 153–166.Google Scholar
Wagner, Richard. 2004. “Public Choice as an Academic Enterprise: Charlottesville, Blacksburg, and Fairfax Retrospectively Viewed.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 63 (January): 55–74.Google Scholar
Wagner, Richard. 2008. “James M. Buchanan.” In Blume, L. and Durlauf, S., eds., New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Second edition. London: Palgrave Macmillian. <http://www.dictionaryofeconomics.com/article?id=pde2008_B000303> doi:10.1057/9780230226203.0170. Accessed 29 July 2014.Google Scholar
Walsh, Mary Williams. 2007. “Richard A. Musgrave, 96, Theoretician of Public Finance Dies.” New York Times (January 20), online. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/20/business/20musgrave.html. Accessed 29 July 2014.Google Scholar
White, Charles P. 1928. “The Effect of the 80 Per Cent Credit Clause of the Federal Estate Tax Law on State Inheritance Tax Laws.” Journal of Political Economy 36 (5): 625–633.Google Scholar
Wicksell, Knut. 1896. Finanztheoretische Untersuchungen. Jena: Gustav Fisher.Google Scholar
Wicksell, Knut. 1935. Lectures on Political Economy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd.Google Scholar