Cost and Choice: An Inquiry in Economic Theory

While relatively short, Cost and Choice, according to Hartmut Kliemt in the foreword, “holds quite a central place in Buchanan’s work. For the fundamental economic notion of ‘cost’, or ‘opportunity cost’, is intimately related to the individualist and subjectivist perspective that is so essential to the Buchanan enterprise.”

To be sure, the Austrian School of economists enunciated similar views of cost decades before Buchanan, but Buchanan advances his theories by attempting to integrate hi...