James M. Buchanan
James McGill Buchanan Jr. ( ; October 3, 1919 – January 9, 2013) was an American economist known for his work on public choice theory originally outlined in his most famous work, ''The Calculus of Consent'', co-authored with Gordon Tullock in 1962. He continued to develop the theory, eventually receiving the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986. Buchanan's work initiated research on how politicians' and bureaucrats' self-interest, utility maximization, and other non-wealth-maximizing considerations affect their decision-making. He was a member of the Board of Advisors of The Independent Institute as well as of the Institute of Economic Affairs, a member of the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) and MPS president from 1984 to 1986, a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute, and professor at George Mason University. Early life and education Buchanan was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the eldest of the three children of James and Lila (Scott) Buchanan. His patern ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Murfreesboro, Tennessee
Murfreesboro is a city in Rutherford County, Tennessee, United States, and its county seat. Its population was 165,430 according to the 2023 census estimate, up from 108,755 residents certified in 2010 United States census, 2010. Murfreesboro is located in the Nashville metropolitan area of Middle Tennessee, southeast of downtown Nashville, Tennessee, Nashville. It served as the state capital from 1818 to 1826. Today, it is the largest suburb of Nashville and the List of municipalities in Tennessee, sixth-most populous city in Tennessee. The city is both the center of population and the geographic center of Tennessee. Since the 1990s, Murfreesboro has been Tennessee's fastest-growing major city and one of the fastest-growing cities in the country. Murfreesboro is home to Middle Tennessee State University, one of the largest undergraduate universities in the state of Tennessee, with 20,540 total students as of fall 2024. History On October 27, 1811, the Tennessee General Ass ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Friedrich Hayek
Friedrich August von Hayek (8 May 1899 – 23 March 1992) was an Austrian-born British academic and philosopher. He is known for his contributions to political economy, political philosophy and intellectual history. Hayek shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Gunnar Myrdal for work on money and economic fluctuations, and the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena. His account of how prices communicate information is widely regarded as an important contribution to economics that led to him receiving the prize. He was a major contributor to the Austrian school of economics. During his teenage years, Hayek fought in World War I. He later said this experience, coupled with his desire to help avoid the mistakes that led to the war, drew him into economics. He earned doctoral degrees in law in 1921 and political studies in 1923 from the University of Vienna. He subsequently lived and worked in Austria, Great Britain, the United Sta ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cato Institute
The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Koch Industries.Koch Industries is the second largest privately held company by revenue in the United States. Cato was established to focus on public advocacy, media exposure, and societal influence. Cato advocates for a limited governmental role in domestic and foreign affairs and strong protection of civil liberties, including support for lowering or abolishing most taxes, opposition to the Federal Reserve system and the Affordable Care Act, the privatization of numerous government agencies and programs including Social Security and the United States Postal Service, demilitarization of the police, open borders and adhering to a non-interventionist foreign policy. According to the 2019 Global ''Go to Think Tank Index Report'' (revised June 2020, Thin ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mont Pelerin Society
The Mont Pelerin Society (MPS), founded in 1947, is an international academic society of Economist, economists, Political philosophy, political philosophers, and other Intelligentsia, intellectuals who share a classical liberal outlook. It is headquartered at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, United States. The society advocates freedom of expression, free market economic policies, and an open society. Further, the society seeks to discover ways in which the Privatization, private sector can replace many functions currently provided by government entities. History The MPS was established on April 10, 1947, at a conference organized by Friedrich Hayek at the base of Mont Pèlerin on Lake Geneva. The conferees met as the International Trade Organization (ITO) charter was being drafted at the opposite end of the lake in Geneva, Switzerland.Alan Ebenstein, Ebenstein, Alan (2014). iarchive:friedrichhayekbi00eben/page/140, "Mont Pèlerin Society." (Chapter 18). iarchive:friedric ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Institute Of Economic Affairs
The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) is a British right-wing free market think tank, which is registered as a charity. Associated with the New Right, the IEA describes itself as an "educational research institute", and says that it seeks to "further the dissemination of free-market thinking" by "analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems". The IEA subscribes to a neoliberal world view and advocates positions based on this ideology. It published climate change denial material between 1994 and 2007. It has advocated for privatisation of, and abolition of complete government control of, the National Health Service (NHS), in favour of a healthcare system with market mechanisms. It has received more than £70,000 from the tobacco industry, although it does not reveal its funders, and an IEA director was recorded offering a prospective supporter introductions to policy makers, referred to as " cash for access". The IEA is headquartered in W ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Independent Institute
The Independent Institute is an American libertarian think tank founded in 1986 by David J. Theroux and based in Oakland, California. The institute has more than 140 research fellows and is organized into seven centers addressing a range of political, social, economic, legal, environmental, and foreign policy issues. The Independent Institute publishes books, reports, blogs, podcasts, and the quarterly scholarly journal '' The Independent Review.'' History The think tank was originally established in San Francisco, was re-located in 1989 to Oakland, and since 2006 has had an office in Washington, D.C. According to the ''2020 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report'' (Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program, University of Pennsylvania), the institute is ranked number 42 (of 110) in the "Top Think Tanks in the United States". Publications and programs Since 1996, the institute has published the quarterly scholarly journal '' The Independent Review'', whose founding editor and edit ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Calculus Of Consent
''The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy'' is a book published by economists James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock in 1962. It is considered to be one of the classic works from the discipline of public choice in economics and political science. This work presents the basic principles of public choice theory. Overview The analytical approach of the authors is based on '' methodological individualism'' - collective action is composed of individual actions - and on the rejection of any organic interpretation of the state. A purely individualistic conception of collectivity is maintained: the state is an artifact, created by men and thus subject to change and perfection. Buchanan and Tullock maintain that only constitutional changes, which can be shown to be in the interest of all interested parties, can be judged as "improvements" and therefore consider conceptual unanimity as the only legitimate decision-making rule. The authors analyze the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Public Choice Theory
Public choice, or public choice theory, is "the use of economic tools to deal with traditional problems of political science." Gordon Tullock, 9872008, "public choice," '' The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics''. . It includes the study of political behavior. In political science, it is the subset of positive political theory that studies self-interested agents (voters, politicians, bureaucrats) and their interactions, which can be represented in a number of ways—using (for example) standard constrained utility maximization, game theory, or decision theory. It is the origin and intellectual foundation of contemporary work in political economics.Alberto Alesina, Torsten Persson, Guido Tabellini, 2006. “Reply to Blankart and Koester's Political Economics versus Public Choice Two Views of Political Economy in Competition,” Kyklos, 59(2), pp. 201–208 In popular use, "public choice" is often used as a shorthand for components of modern public choice theory that focus o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Economist
An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this field there are many sub-fields, ranging from the broad philosophy, philosophical theory, theories to the focused study of minutiae within specific Market (economics), markets, macroeconomics, macroeconomic analysis, microeconomics, microeconomic analysis or financial statement analysis, involving analytical methods and tools such as econometrics, statistics, Computational economics, economics computational models, financial economics, regulatory impact analysis and mathematical economics. Professions Economists work in many fields including academia, government and in the private sector, where they may also "study data and statistics in order to spot trends in economic activity, economic confidence levels, and consumer attitudes. They ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nobel Memorial Prize In Economic Sciences
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (), commonly referred to as the Nobel Prize in Economics(), is an award in the field of economic sciences administered by the Nobel Foundation, established in 1968 by Sveriges Riksbank (Sweden's central bank) to celebrate its 300th anniversary and in memory of Alfred Nobel. Although the Prize in Economic Sciences was not one of the original five Nobel Prizes established by Alfred Nobel's will, it is considered a member of the Nobel Prize system, and is administered and referred to along with the Nobel Prizes by the Nobel Foundation. Winners of the Prize in Economic Sciences are chosen in a similar manner to and announced alongside the Nobel Prize recipients, and receive the Prize in Economic Sciences at the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony. The laureates of the Prize in Economic Sciences are selected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Samaritan's Dilemma
The Samaritan's dilemma is a dilemma in the act of charity. It hinges on the idea that when presented with charity, in some locations such as a soup kitchen, a person will act in one of two ways: using the charity to improve their situation, or coming to rely on charity as a means of survival. The term ''Samaritan's dilemma'' was coined by economist James M. Buchanan as a moral hazard. The dilemma's name is a reference to the biblical Parable of the Good Samaritan. Background In 1970 Buchanan said that the phrase "Samaritan's dilemma" was used by economists to describe how a benevolent individual or institution transfers what was intended to be short-term charity to those in need, only to find that those on the receiving end are not using the assistance to improve themselves but instead became dependent on the relief. As a result both suffer. This was part of a paper entitled, "The 'Social' Efficiency of Education", at the September 1970 meeting in Munich of the Mont Pelerin Socie ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Club Good
goods (also artificially scarce goods, toll goods, collective goods or quasi-public goods) are a type of good in economics, sometimes classified as a subtype of public goods that are excludable but non-rivalrous, at least until reaching a point where congestion occurs. Often these goods exhibit high excludability, but at the same time low rivalry in consumption. Thus, club goods have essentially zero marginal costs and are generally provided by what is commonly known as natural monopolies. Furthermore, club goods have artificial scarcity. Club theory is the area of economics that studies these goods.Suzanne Scotchmer, 2008. "clubs," '' The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics'', 2nd EditionAbstract./ref> One of the most famous provisions was published by Buchanan in 1965 "An Economic Theory of Clubs," in which he addresses the question of how the size of the group influences the voluntary provision of a public good and more fundamentally provides a theoretical structure of com ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |