Symposium on James M. Buchanan and Classical Liberalism.

• Author: Coyne, Christopher J.
• Position: Biography - Conference notes

Introduction

Nobel Laureate economist James M. Buchanan passed away on January 9, 2013, at the age of ninety-three. We want to reflect on some of his key contributions to classical liberalism. In this introduction, I provide some background on Buchanan's life and touch upon some of the main writings and themes in his research program to provide context to the articles that follow in this issue.

James McGill Buchanan was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in 1919. He attended Middle Tennessee State College, where he earned a B.A. in 1940, followed by an M.S. from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville in 1941. In that same year, Buchanan was drafted into the United States Navy, serving until 1945. He then returned to school, earning a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1948. Upon graduation from Chicago, he held teaching positions at the University of Tennessee (1950-51) and Florida State University (1951-56). Following his time at Florida State, he spent twelve years at the University of Virginia (1956-69), where he cofounded (with Warren Nutter) the Thomas Jefferson Center for Studies in Political Economy in 1957. After a year at the University of California at Los Angeles in 1969, Buchanan joined the faculty at Virginia Polytechnic Institute (1969- 83), where he established, along with Gordon Tullock, the Center for the Study of Public Choice. In 1983, he moved with the Public Choice Center to George Mason University, where he would spend the rest of his career. At all three universities, the University of Virginia, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and George Mason, he showed a remarkable combination of individual innovation and collaborative institution building. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1986 "for his development of the contractual and constitutional bases for the theory of economic and political decision- making" ("James M. Buchanan" n.d.).

The foundations of Buchanan's research program were influenced by three important events, two of which occurred during his time as a graduate student at the University of Chicago. The first was his price-theory class with Frank Knight. When he arrived at Chicago, Buchanan was a self-described "libertarian socialist." However, after several weeks of Knight's price-theory class, he became a staunch supporter and advocate of the free market.

The second key event was Buchanan's discovery of Knut Wicksell's work on the principle of just taxation, which he chanced upon while browsing the shelves of the Harper Library. As Buchanan told the story, the slim volume (Finanztheoretische Untersuchungen [Investigations in public finance]) would not have been available to him had he not learned German as a requirement for the completion of his degree at Chicago. Buchanan was so moved by Wicksell's insights that he later translated the work and facilitated its publication in English for the first time (see Wicksell [1896] 1958).

The third occurred after Buchanan left Chicago. During 1955-56, while on a Fulbright grant, Buchanan studied in Italy, where he was exposed to the Italian tradition of public finance. Those working within this tradition emphasized actual...