James Buchanan advocated the market mechanism for allocating resources because it is based on voluntary exchange. People engage in market transactions only when they believe they benefit from doing so. Buchanan depicted the political process the same way. People engage in collective activities...

Whenever the economic model of behavior is to be applied, the utility function has—at least somewhat—to be specified. Buchanan generally prefers to apply a rather narrow version. However, he acknowledges that it is hardly possible to explain actual behavior of individuals with such a...

Cet article étudie la pensée économique et sociale de Friedrich Hayek, figure majeure du libéralisme contemporain. Notre but est de présenter les grandes lignes du libéralisme hayékien pour en éclairer la position sur : le rôle de la démocratie dans la détermination d'une bonne...

Many economists have defended capitalism; most have tried to do so within the self-imposed methodological constraint that economists should employ only empirical arguments, not normative ones. This essay examines three classic amoral defenses of capitalism—by Milton Friedman, James Buchanan,...

James Buchanan pioneered the political economics of public debt 60 years ago. In this paper, we contrast his thinking of the burden of debt, the public choice mechanisms that lead to excessive debt and the demand for constitutional restraints on public debt with its development, its...

There is a respectable tradition of Burkean constitutional interpretation in legal scholarship whereas Edmund Burke is a relatively neglected figure in constitutional political economy. A comparison of the constitutional interpretations of constitutional political economy and Burkean legal...