matched in the past century. Unlike the typical mainstream economist, Jim was never just fooling around, toying with a tweaked model or a trivial, throw-away idea. To a rare degree, he kept his eyes focused on the prize of true economic understanding.
He gave me a deeper understanding of the market process than anyone else had given me. He raised many worthwhile questions that I continue to ponder. He offered me a shining example of the economist as a serious thinker, not simply an idiot savant fooling with models.
The NYTimes quotes Tyler:
Over the years since Dr. Buchanan won the Nobel, much of what he predicted has played out. Government is bigger than ever. Tax revenue has fallen far short of public programs’ needs. Public and private borrowing has become a way of life. Politicians still act in their own interests while espousing the public good, and national deficits have soared into the trillions.
…In a commentary in The New York Times in March 2011, Tyler Cowen, an economics professor at George Mason, said his colleague Dr. Buchanan had accurately forecast that deficit spending for short-term gains would evolve into “a permanent disconnect” between government outlays and revenue.
“We end up institutionalizing irresponsibility in the federal government, the largest and most central institution in our society,” Dr. Cowen wrote. “As we fail to make progress on entitlement reform with each passing year, Professor Buchanan’s essentially moral critique of deficit spending looks more prophetic.”
Writing in the Wall Street Journal our colleague Don Boudreaux also points to Jim’s work on the true burden of the debt–stop the we owe it to ourselves madness! Lars Christensen looks at one of Buchanan’s many interesting ideas, the brick standard for monetary policy. Randall Holcombe remembers his teacher. The Washington Post and Bloomberg offer useful commentaries as does political scientist Tim Groseclose.
Of course you should not ignore Buchanan’s own writings which spans more than 20 volumes, 10 of which are available online. Buchanan’s classic Politics without Romance offers a short introduction as does his Nobel lecture.
Buchanan’s Nobel lecture illustrates why, even today, many other economists don’t get Buchanan. While other economists are looking for “efficiency” and “optimality” in models Buchanan had a very different concept of welfare economics.
[Buchanan]…sought to bring all available scientific analysis to bear in helping to resolve the continuing question of social order: How can we live together in peace, prosperity, and harmony, while retaining our liberties as autonomous individuals who can, and must, create our own values?
On a personal note, I was fortunate to have Buchanan both as a teacher and as a colleague. He founded the Center for Study of Public Choice that today I direct.
Buchanan wrote not for the hour or the day but for the age and his influence will continue far into the long run.
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