James M. Buchanan

"Nobel Laureate James Buchanan collects in this volume original and recent hard-to-find essays exploring liberalism and conservatism as distinct ways of looking at and thinking about the realm of human interaction. Classical liberalism is presented here as a coherent political and economic position, as distinguished from both modern liberalism and conservatism."--Jacket.

The thirty-one papers presented in this volume offer scholars and general readers alike a comprehensive introduction to the work of one of the greatest economists of the modern era. Many of Buchanan's most important essays are gathered in this inaugural volume of the twenty-volume series from Liberty Fund of his Collected Works. The editors have focused on papers that Buchanan has written without collaboration and which present Buchanan's earlier, classic statements on crucial subjects rather than his subsequent elaborations which appear in later volumes in the series. Included, too, is Buchanan's Nobel address, "The Constitution of Economic Policy," and the text of the Nobel Committee's press release explaining why Buchanan was awarded the prize for Economics in 1986. The volume also includes Buchanan's autobiographical essay, "Better Than Plowing," in which he gives not only a brief account of his life, but also his own assessment of what is important, distinctive, and enduring in his work. The foreword by the three series editors will be valuable to all readers who wish to engage the challenging but epochal writings of the father of modern public choice theory. --

In Ethics and Economic Progress, Nobel Prize-winning economist James M. Buchanan argues that ethical or moral constraints on human behavior exert important economic effects. He considers the question, Why are we better off by our own reckoning, when we work harder, save more, and deal honestly in markets and in politics? This nontechnical book opens up the entire economics-ethics nexus for examination. Part 1 examines behaviors and standards that can be subsumed under the term "Puritan ethics." The work ethic and the saving ethic may not be fashionable today, but Buchanan asserts that many modern attitudes and habits relate to the decline in productivity growth in the economy. If we acknowledge that moral values are important to our economic well-being, it follows that we must all "pay the preacher," on strictly economic grounds. Part II extends the argument, examining the implications for ethical norms that describe the behavior of taxpayers or public program users and the economics of the work ethic as it applies to nonlabor resources. The last chapter, perhaps the most controversial, suggests that Adam Smith's distinction between productive and nonproductive labor, which has been almost universally dismissed by economists, may indeed have economic relevance. Chapters 1, 2, and 3 were presented in 1991 as the first lectures in the W R. Howell, Sr., Second Century Lecture Series at the University of Oklahoma.