Public Finance in Democratic Process: Fiscal Institutions and Individual Choice

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...