What determines the kinds of questions economists ask and the answers they find convincing? More generally, why are the institutions that constitute scholarly economics the way they are? I answer both of these questions by positing that within the modern economics profession, it is plausible...

This paper provides an overview of Buchanan's constitutional political economy, as it emerged over the course of fifty years. This was the field in which James Buchanan devoted the most effort and to which he made the largest contributions. Although the finely grained arguments that he developed...

The paper examines Robert Sugden’s arguments for contractarian economics, which exclude objective valuation. From a metaethical stance we claim that it is possible and desirable to enrich the axiology of contractarian economics to make it more convincing and applicable. Analyzing Sugden's...