James M. Buchanan

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James M. Buchanan
Born October 3, 1919 (1919-10-03) (age 89)
Murfreesboro, Tennessee
Fields Economics
Known for Public choice theory

James McGill Buchanan, Jr. (born October 3, 1919) is a libertarian American economist renowned for his work on public choice theory, for which he won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Economics. Buchanan's work opened the door for the examination of how politicians' self-interest and non-economic forces affect government economic policy. Like many modern free-market economists, he supports radically shrinking the federal government, and abolishing most of its bureaucracies.

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[edit] Biography

Buchanan graduated from Middle Tennessee Normal School in 1940. He completed his M.S. from the University of Tennessee in 1941 and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1948.

Buchanan has long been a professor at George Mason University, and is a central figure in the Virginia school of political economy. Buchanan also held teaching positions at the University of Virginia (founding the Thomas Jefferson center), UCLA, Florida State University, the University of Tennessee, and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute (with the Center for the Study of Public Choice]). Buchanan moved with the center to its new home at GMU. Buchanan's work in economics included a rigorous analysis of the theory of logrolling.

[edit] List of publications

[edit] References

  • Kasper, Sherryl. The Revival of Laissez-Faire in American Macroeconomic Theory: A Case Study of Its Pioneers (2002) ch 6

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[edit] External links

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