Public Finance in Democratic Process: Fiscal Institutions and Individual Choice

Public Finance in Democratic Process: Fiscal Institutions and Individual Choice

by James M. Buchanan
Public Finance in Democratic Process: Fiscal Institutions and Individual Choice

Public Finance in Democratic Process: Fiscal Institutions and Individual Choice

by James M. Buchanan

Hardcover(Volume 4)

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Overview

Public Finance in Democratic Process is James M. Buchanan’s monumental work that outlines the dynamics of individual choice as it is displayed in the process of public finance.

Buchanan is perhaps nowhere more clearly a disciple of the great Swedish economist Knut Wicksell than he is in the underlying principles of this seminal work. Specifically, he elaborates on these three central Wicksellian themes:

  1. Analysis of market failure in the provision of public goods.

  2. The insistence on conceiving policy decisions as the outcome of political processes.

  3. The necessity of treating the tax and expense sides of the budget as interconnected.

Echoing Wicksell’s antipathy to the “benevolent despot” model of government, Buchanan lays out in this book a starting point for modern public-choice analysis. Recognizing the pathbreaking work he is about to begin, Buchanan opens his preface by stating, “Fiscal theory is normally discussed in a frame of reference wholly different from that adopted in this book. This dramatic shift of emphasis . . . . requires that I consider the processes through which individual choices are transmitted, combined, and transformed into collective outcomes. Careful research in this area is in its infancy, and the necessary reliance on crude, unsophisticated models underscores the exploratory nature of the work.”

According to Geoffrey Brennan in the foreword, “Public Finance in Democratic Process is a work more hospitable to public finance orthodoxy and could be treated as an extension (albeit an important one) of the conventional approach.”

James M. Buchanan (1919–2013) was an eminent economist who won the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986 and was considered one of the greatest scholars of liberty in the twentieth century.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780865972193
Publisher: Liberty Fund, Incorporated
Publication date: 11/01/1999
Series: The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan , #4
Edition description: Volume 4
Pages: 328
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Lexile: 1710L (what's this?)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Recipient of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Economics, James Buchanan has won international recognition for his pioneering role in the development of public-choice theory.

Table of Contents

Forewordvii
Prefacexi
Part IThe Effects of Institutions on Fiscal Choice
1.Introduction3
2.Individual Demand for Public Goods11
3.Tax Institutions and Individual Fiscal Choice: Direct Taxation22
4.Tax Institutions and Individual Fiscal Choice: Indirect Taxation45
5.Existing Institutions and Change: The Effects of Time in Fiscal Decisions58
6.Earmarking V ersus General-Fund Financing: Analysis and Effects72
Numerical Appendix to Chapter 685
7.The Bridge Between Tax and Expenditure in the Fiscal Decision Process88
8."Fiscal Policy" and Fiscal Choice: The Effects of Unbalanced Budgets98
9.Individual Choice and the Indivisibility of Public Goods113
10.The Fiscal Illusion126
11.Simple Collective Decision Models144
Appendix to Chapter 11160
12.From Theory to the Real World169
13.Some Preliminary Research Results181
Part IIThe Choice Among Fiscal Institutions
14.The Levels of Fiscal Choice213
15.Income Tax Progression225
16.Specific Excise Taxation241
17.The Institution of Public Debt256
18.Fiscal Policy Constitutionally Considered267
19.Fiscal Nihilism and Beyond280
Index of Authors301
Index of Subjects303

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This book is perhaps the best compact exposition of Buchanan's theory of public choice.—James C. Miller III, from the Foreword

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