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Positive Economics, Welfare Economics, and Political Economy
... Este punto es esencial para la economía política, pues sugiere que el economista bajo ningún caso puede atribuirse la potestad ética de ser un observador externo (Buchanan 1954(Buchanan , 1964) -i. e. desasociado del proceso de intercambio-para enseñarle a la sociedad cuál debería ser el resultado o la política más adecuada para los participantes de la negociación, ya que este no conoce las preferencias éticas de los individuos (Buchanan 1959(Buchanan , 1972. De igual modo, tampoco puede adjudicarse una presunta superioridad epistémica que le permita discernir cuál es el bien común de una sociedad, como si este fuera objetiva y teleológicamente identificable o como si pudiera ser reconocido fuera de los procesos sociales que lo conforman (Buchanan 1959, 1983, Ostrom 2000 16 . ...
... e. desasociado del proceso de intercambio-para enseñarle a la sociedad cuál debería ser el resultado o la política más adecuada para los participantes de la negociación, ya que este no conoce las preferencias éticas de los individuos (Buchanan 1959(Buchanan , 1972. De igual modo, tampoco puede adjudicarse una presunta superioridad epistémica que le permita discernir cuál es el bien común de una sociedad, como si este fuera objetiva y teleológicamente identificable o como si pudiera ser reconocido fuera de los procesos sociales que lo conforman (Buchanan 1959, 1983, Ostrom 2000 16 . ...
... Así, la public choice se contrapone a la visión ortodoxa de la ciencia económica, que considera el bien público como si tuviese una existencia externa o teleológica (Arrow 1974) fuera de los valores y de las actividades de interacción, que se expresan a través del comportamiento de elección y de acción en el espacio público (Buchanan 1954). De hecho, Buchanan (1954Buchanan ( , 1959) era crítico de la idea de que el bien público (o bienestar social) pueda ser identificado a través de una función de bienestar social (social welfare function), pues esta concepción no emergente del bien común ha permitido asignar a los economistas el peligroso rol de asesor -supuestamente imparcial y científicode distintas expresiones del déspota benevolente. Esto llevaría a los economistas a caer en la arrogancia de creer que ellos son los únicos capaces de determinar cuáles son las verdaderas preferencias de la sociedad y, por tanto, que saben qué es lo "mejor" para esta (Buchanan 1959: 126). ...
This essay analyzes the three fundamental premises underpinning public choice theory, based on the work of Nobel Prize winner James Buchanan. It first explores the three premises by analyzing Buchanan’s contractarian thought, illuminating what he considered its key elements: methodological individualism, behavioral symmetry, and politics as an exchange. Thereafter, the essay examines three major economic, political, and philosophical implications that can be derived from such a vision. The essay concludes by highlighting that under Buchanan’s contractarian paradigm, we can derive significant concepts and original theoretical implications concerning how we can think and reconfigure a pluralist social order compatible with the principles of liberal democracy and association.
... Este punto es esencial para la economía política, pues sugiere que el economista bajo ningún caso puede atribuirse la potestad ética de ser un observador externo (Buchanan 1954(Buchanan , 1964) -i. e. desasociado del proceso de intercambio-para enseñarle a la sociedad cuál debería ser el resultado o la política más adecuada para los participantes de la negociación, ya que este no conoce las preferencias éticas de los individuos (Buchanan 1959(Buchanan , 1972. De igual modo, tampoco puede adjudicarse una presunta superioridad epistémica que le permita discernir cuál es el bien común de una sociedad, como si este fuera objetiva y teleológicamente identificable o como si pudiera ser reconocido fuera de los procesos sociales que lo conforman (Buchanan 1959, 1983, Ostrom 2000 16 . ...
... e. desasociado del proceso de intercambio-para enseñarle a la sociedad cuál debería ser el resultado o la política más adecuada para los participantes de la negociación, ya que este no conoce las preferencias éticas de los individuos (Buchanan 1959(Buchanan , 1972. De igual modo, tampoco puede adjudicarse una presunta superioridad epistémica que le permita discernir cuál es el bien común de una sociedad, como si este fuera objetiva y teleológicamente identificable o como si pudiera ser reconocido fuera de los procesos sociales que lo conforman (Buchanan 1959, 1983, Ostrom 2000 16 . ...
... Así, la public choice se contrapone a la visión ortodoxa de la ciencia económica, que considera el bien público como si tuviese una existencia externa o teleológica (Arrow 1974) fuera de los valores y de las actividades de interacción, que se expresan a través del comportamiento de elección y de acción en el espacio público (Buchanan 1954). De hecho, Buchanan (1954Buchanan ( , 1959) era crítico de la idea de que el bien público (o bienestar social) pueda ser identificado a través de una función de bienestar social (social welfare function), pues esta concepción no emergente del bien común ha permitido asignar a los economistas el peligroso rol de asesor -supuestamente imparcial y científicode distintas expresiones del déspota benevolente. Esto llevaría a los economistas a caer en la arrogancia de creer que ellos son los únicos capaces de determinar cuáles son las verdaderas preferencias de la sociedad y, por tanto, que saben qué es lo "mejor" para esta (Buchanan 1959: 126). ...
Resumen Este ensayo analiza las tres premisas de la teoría de la elección pública a través del pensamiento del Premio Nobel James Buchanan. Primero, se exploran los tres principios orientadores de la elección pública, mediante el trabajo contractualista de Buchanan: el individualismo metodológico, la simetría del comportamiento y la política como procesos de intercambio. Posteriormente, se examina en detalle las tres principales implicancias económicas, políticas y filosóficas que se pueden derivar de dicha visión analítica. El ensayo concluye señalando que-desde el paradigma contractualista de Buchanan-se obtienen ciertos conceptos decisivos e implicancias teóricas originales que generan nuevas categorías filosóficas y políticas acerca del rol de los economistas y de un orden social pluralista, compatibles con la democracia liberal y con la asociación.
... Yet, an important political economy tradition, identified most notably with George Stigler, Gary Becker, and the Chicago School of political economy, suggests that in liberal representative democracies the political process essentially reflects the preferences of 1 See IGM Forum (n.d.). 2 While many definitions of "efficiency" are possible and it is not always clear what individual authors have in mind, we mean Kaldor-Hicks efficiency, whereby an outcome is efficient if the benefits outweigh the costs and could, in principle, involve transfers to make the policy Pareto efficient, whether or not those who benefit actually compensate anyone. Buchanan (1959) discusses criticisms of Kaldor-Hicks efficiency, notably that side-payments (compensation) to those who lose from policy changes are almost always hypothetical. Without actual compensation, "the whole controversy over the appropriate tests [for welfare-enhancing policy] becomes meaningless" (Buchanan, 1959, p. 128). ...
... Our arguments extend Buchanan's insight. We discuss Buchanan's (1959) paradigm for doing welfare economics more fully in the Conclusion. However, in our model, compensation is paid, so the distinction does not matter: Kaldor-Hicks efficient policies are Pareto efficient. ...
... In addition to the theoretical innovation that allows us to speak of asymptotic efficiency and bounded inefficiencies, our approach suggests an alternative perspective on more applied policy work, and the role of the economist in public discourse. Buchanan (1959) argued that the way to "test" whether policy changes are improvements is whether the proposed changes can secure the unanimous consent of interested parties. Economists can contribute to crafting efficiency-enhancing policies at the margin by proposing political bargains that expand the size of the social product, while simultaneously containing distributional elements that make the proposals acceptable to existing stakeholders. ...
Politics, like any social system, involves selection mechanisms. This paper presents a model of politics as an evolutionary process. Our model yields three main results. First, the political process selects for efficient policies in the long run. We call that attribute asymptotic efficiency. Second, bargaining amongst interest groups bounds the inefficiencies that can exist in the short run. Potential inefficiency declines when organizing interest groups becomes less costly. Finally, policies that appear to be inefficient in a static analysis can be efficient once economists consider the dynamic nature of political decisions. We argue that viewing the political process as a selection mechanism allows political economists to use efficiency as a criterion for positive economic analysis. In our approach, applied political economy involves looking for relevant costs that make the policy efficient. However, our approach does not rob political economists of the ability to make meaningful normative statements; it only constrains the type of statements made.
... , Richard Posner (1939 -alive), as well as Oliver Hart (1948alive), all of whom helped to found the sub-field in economics known as New Institutional Economics (NIE). For more see, Ronald Harry Coase (1937), Ronald H Coase (1960), and J. M. Buchanan (1975). See also Volume 7 of Buchanan's Collected Works entitled "The Limits of Liberty" in J. M. Buchanan (2000). ...
... For more see, Ronald Harry Coase (1937), Ronald H Coase (1960), and J. M. Buchanan (1975). See also Volume 7 of Buchanan's Collected Works entitled "The Limits of Liberty" in J. M. Buchanan (2000). 35. ...
... 84. See J. M. Buchanan (1959), J. M. Buchanan (1962) and J. M. Buchanan (2004). contemporary economists -both Austrian and Neoclassicists -are trying to get away from cardinal utility. ...
This unpublished Masters Research Paper contains two interrelated sections; the first section uses an accurate textual reading of Smith, Ricardo, & Marx to 1) resolve the authorship dispute concerning the origins of the so-called Labour Theory of Value, and 2) clear up the confused attribution debate (`authorship kerfuffle') of Pierro Sraffa's (1898-1983) Physical Quantities framework. I then use my textual analysis to criticize contractual defenses of sweatshops, such as the ones offered by Zwolinski (2007), and Powell and Zwolinski (2012), and clear up some confusion regarding the link between `exploitation' as a concept
and the so-called Labour Theory of Value. The second section builds on the first part by analysing trends in US public expenditures and critiquing redistributionist politics within the framework of an accurate understanding of Marx's value theory and capitalist production. To supplement my analysis, I examine a novel dataset on Distributional
National Accounts (DINA) from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). I also discuss the `Neoliberal' characterization of capitalist development, and tendency to divide capitalism into distinct sub-periods. Overall, I find that that previous concerns in the literature about an alleged `shrinking' of the welfare state, generally attributed
to the post-WWII `neoliberalizion' of the US economy, has been overestimated, and is not borne out by empirical evidence.
Suggested citation: Balaji, Ridhiman. 2022. "Should Capitalist Production be Considered Exploitative? A Contribution to Discussions on Sweatshops, Income Inequality, & The Capitalist Production Process". Concordia University.
... However; It was emphasized that such a situation leads to the possibility of encouraging citizens to alternative ways (cheating, lies, etc.), and therefore, with the dissolution (loss of trust) in the social structure, economic and political dissolution processes in the form of snowballs or butterfly effects may also start [77]. James M. Buchanan (1959), drawing attention to the redistributive structure of the Welfare State, the income earned through taxes in the Welfare State, within the scope of pre-determined normative processes for legitimate purposes, disadvantaged, poor, retired, children, elderly, etc. He emphasized that it was distributed to groups. ...
... According to that; The greatest concern in the logic of the Welfare State is the inertia of the citizens to work, weakening their enthusiasm and willingness to work and the principles of business ethics. Otherwise; He stated that it would be impossible to live a prosperous life in peace, in which social order is preserved [78]. ...
This study was taken into account the Nordic countries example, the main key features of the Nordic welfare state and comparisons with some other developed countries in terms of social development, based on the definition and historical development of the concept of the social state. Implemented policies and government revenues focused on key elements of a welfare state. Application of this model to Azerbaijan economy also was studied at the same time.
In this work I have investigated what actually the key features of this model are, why the welfare state is so important and what kind of advantages we can get from it. The thesis examines how the Nordic countries have developed; studying both as a model and separately as countries on the basis of individual indicators, and how they have achieved this development.
Azerbaijan and Nordic countries have been compared with some indicators such as GDP, GNP, GNI per capita; similar and distinctive features was analyzed and also making comparison by the prices of products and income, living conditions also have been confronted.
Also, in this thesis it has been mentioned about the role of the taxes in welfare state. Data taken from State Statistics Committee was analyzed, and relationship between tax revenue and GDP was explained by using regression analysis and Durbin Watson test.
107 people has been taken online survey focused on welfare state. The results of this survey have been analyzed and interpretation included in the paper.
Keywords: The welfare state, Nordic economic model, economic regulation, development.
... In determining what is to be produced, the preferences and valuations of government gatekeepers dominate and replace those of private consumers. This is because the preferences of the private consumer are never revealed and can never be accessed by the external analyst or decision-maker (see Rothbard, 1956;Buchanan, 1959). This means that at some point in the government decision-making process (and likely at several points) the analyst will need to impose their judgements and valuations of what is best produced on the final consumer. ...
Kenneth Boulding argued that the people and organizations that constitute the war industry hold a special place in economic systems. They blur the line between private and public, and producer and destroyer. At the core of the war industry is the unique military organization, or what Boulding called “milorg,” which includes the entire network of public and private organizations, and the people who populate those organizations, involved in the war industry. The purpose of this paper is to explore the political economy of the milorg by engaging in comparative institutional analysis. We do so by comparing how the milorg, relative to private firms outside of the military industry, answers four fundamental economic questions—(1) What is to be produced? (2) At what price and quantity is it to be produced? (3) How is it to be produced? (4) With whose resources is it to be produced? To explore the answer to these questions we focus on incentive and epistemic institutionalism. Incentive institutionalism focuses on the incentive structures created by different institutional arrangements. Epistemic institutionalism, in contrast, focuses on the different forms of economic knowledge emerging from different institutional arrangements.
... Este debate se reaviva con La metodología de la economía positiva (1953) de Milton Friedman, quien expone más claramente la posición positivista llamando a distinguir entre el comportamiento científico y no científico de los economistas (Buchanan, 1959). ...
La eponimia en economía suele estar presente a lo largo de la historia del pensamiento. El "tenedor de Hume" no es la excepción. Atribuyéndose en libros de textos únicamente a John Neville Keynes, la dicotomía ser-debe ser halla sus raíces en el pensamiento del escocés David Hume quien coloca la piedra angular en una trayectoria representacional que atraviesa el pensamiento de los clásicos hasta ser recogida y explicitada por Keynes padre. Atribuible generalmente al pensamiento ortodoxo, la dicotomía difiere del pensamiento heterodoxo donde se levantan voces discordantes. Sin embargo, la dicotomía logra zanjar las dificultades y asoma su nariz con nueva vestimenta en la teoría de la elección racional. Este trabajo analiza desde el aspecto epistemológico el surgimiento y evolución del "tenedor de Hume" el cual, se esboza, se halla implícito a lo largo del pensamiento económico. Clasificación JEL: B3-B4 Introducción La discusión contemporánea sobre las nociones de positivo y normativo en economía halla su raíz en David Hume (1711-1776). La "dicotomía de Hume", "el tenedor de Hume (Hume's forke)" y "la guillotina de Hume" (Hands, 2009) entonces está enraizada en la filosofía donde sigue siendo tema de debate continuo (Searle, 1965, 2001). Sin embargo, la realidad histórica de "la dicotomía de Hume" con el transcurso del tiempo deja de ser fiel a su génesis desde que se la atribuye comúnmente a John Neville Keynes. La eponimia expuesta no es de extrañar. Utilizando epónimos cuya función es asignar reconocimiento a los economistas por su trabajo académico en el avance en el conocimiento en el área de la economía matemática y la econometría principalmente,
... For example, good governance often is taken to entail establishing or maintaining perceived legitimacy (Rohr, 1986;Spicer & Terry, 1993) or satisfying other normative criteria, such as the rule of law or equal treatment of all (Christiano, 1996). Perhaps the most widely accepted criterion of good governance, however, is efficiency (Weber, 1922(Weber, , 1978Buchanan, 1959;Besley, 2004;Agnafors, 2013: p. 440;Zacka, 2017: p. 21). To the extent possible, we remain agnostic about criteria defining good governance, since our argument does not hang on one or another criterion. ...
Over the past century, the administrative state has vastly expanded its power and political independence of Congress. Some prominent academic voices, such as Cass Sunstein and Joseph Heath, have argued that we should endorse the administrative state’s large and growing powers to reap the benefits of technical expertise. We introduce an important qualification to that claim by highlighting the contingency of expert knowledge. The reliability of expertise is institutionally sensitive, and the centralized administrative state is plagued by epistemic drawbacks. The contingency of expert knowledge means that, although experts supply crucial inputs into intelligent policy design, without the correct epistemic ecosystem, expert rule is likely to produce expert failure. After presenting that qualification, we show how introducing competition, contestation, and diversity into the bureaucracy’s epistemic ecosystem facilitates the discovery, communication, and implementation of useful knowledge. The institutional structure we prescribe therefore resembles the Ostromian idea of polycentric governance. Such an institutional structure, we argue, is better able to harness the benefits of expertise while mitigating the pathologies of the centralized administrative state. We argue that polycentric political systems can enhance the effectiveness of expertise.
... 7 Douglass North (1990, p. 85) has suggested that the compensation deal enabled Britain to abolish slavery without a conflict like the American Civil War and had antislavery forces in America realized the price they would pay to end slavery by force they might have adopted a similar approach. Colonial slavery may not have led into the abyss of civil war as domestic slavery did in the United States, but the ostensible success of the British compensation scheme in aligning the interests of slaveowners with abolition and thereby facilitating unanimous change may nevertheless support scholarship in the public choice tradition that suggests the payment of compensation to vested interests-including a "deal with the devil", or the perpetrators or beneficiaries of injustice-can make reform Paretosuperior and enable a peaceful transition to more just arrangements (Buchanan, 1959(Buchanan, , 2004Buchanan & Tullock, 1962;Levy & Peart, 2005;Meadowcroft, 2023;Munger, 2018;Munger & Vanberg, 2023). ...
Was the British abolition of slavery and the slave trade a triumph of altruism over pecuniary self-interest? Analysis of qualitative data reveals the importance of self-interested motives underlying this ostensibly other-regarding reform. The abolitionists worked to alleviate the suffering of enslaved Africans, but their campaign faced a collective action problem that was solved by the supply of the private benefits of status, esteem, and possible religious salvation to the leading figures. Abolition was also consistent with the desire of many ordinary Britons to eradicate the remnants of feudal society and move to a more liberal order. The payment of compensation to slaveowners on abolition also made reform consistent with their interests, and the interests of the individuals and financial institutions that processed and invested the payments. This analysis coheres with aspects of Eric Williams’ thesis that abolition took place because it benefited Britain’s ruling elite, although more Britons gained from abolition than Williams supposed. It is concluded that constitutional reform to remove oppressive and exploitative institutions does not follow from a sudden outpouring of societal altruism but requires the supply of private benefits to constitutional entrepreneurs able to make change consistent with the interests of the wider population and powerful groups who would otherwise lose from liberalization.
... … Insofar as "antisocial" or unreasonable individuals are members of the group, consensus, even where genuine "mutual gains" might be present, may be impossible. 64 All of these scholars are wrestling with real challenges to forming and maintaining a free society. When a society includes individuals who cannot learn from or be accountable for their actions, are unreasonable, or thwart freedom for their personal gain, it can undermine the very notion of a free society by promoting the special privileges a free society attempts to be free from. ...
Friedrich A. Hayek argues that “equality of the general rules of law and conduct” is the only kind of equality compatible with liberty and, moreover, that attempting to pursue equality along any other dimension is likely to destroy liberty. For Hayek, then, as a social philosopher and political economist who was principally concerned with understanding and promoting liberal order, the question “What kind of equality?” has a straightforward answer. Equality before the law, perhaps equality of opportunity in a procedural sense, is the equality that we should pursue, not material equality and certainly not equality of outcomes. One wonders, though, whether Hayek dismisses too quickly the more substantive forms of equality and, more importantly, whether we can achieve the liberal society that Hayek envisions without concerning ourselves with more than just the presence or absence of equality of the general rules of law and conduct. This essay will explore, criticize, and expand upon the way that Hayek makes use of equality in his conception of a free society. Specifically, we argue that Hayek may need a more substantive conception of equality than he is willing to deploy in order to arrive at the liberal society he hopes to bring about.
... Unlike the mercantilist pamphleteers, the modern economist is not supposed to be partisan. Lionel Robbins ' (1946) argued that economists cannot give policy advice from a privileged scientific perspective, but only as citizens, a claim adopted and emphasized by James Buchanan as well (James M. Buchanan 1959). According to Robbins' and Buchanan's arguments, the economist may have useful social scientific knowledge, but their policy advice should not be merely an attempt to promote their own personal values. ...
The purpose of this chapter is to outline realistic but also prudent approaches to restoring the primacy of classical liberal principles. Realistic in the sense of acknowledging the self-interested motivations that drive decisions in most domains but prudent insofar as this paper pays attention to the multiplicity of values that balance self-interest, thereby creating obstacles in the path of optimally rational solutions to current challenges. Utopian ideals often mask more sinister intentions, as Burnham reminds us, but it is also a mistake to ignore the contribution of “sentiments” to social arrangements. The paper argues that the realist outlook of the “Machiavellians” ought to be informed by “enlightened” rather than crude self-interest. I suggest that (1) a politics of moderation informed by scepticism toward rationalism; and (2) an exploration of how to make virtue ethics relevant to politics are the most promising avenues for answering that question. These concerns about the political process that is appropriate for gradually disentangling an excessively entangled political economy ought also to lead to a reflection on the sort of substantive policies that could legitimize this process. In this regards, I briefly sketch out an argument for shifting from redistribution to “predistribution,” i.e., asset-based approaches to mitigating the very inequalities that result in democratic entanglements.
... How use ful is it to be told that Buchanan could not be "the mas ter mind of the Amer i can right" because his "work was a fail ure" (154)-since he aban doned Wick sellian una nim ity, which he had championed for decades, and began to advo cate for bal anced bud gets to con trol pub lic spend ing? Also, Buchanan may not have always been clear on bal anced bud gets, even if he always found the con straint use ful to con trol gov ern ments, but he early admit ted that "abso lute una nim ity" was so strong that one could rely on a rel a tive una nim ity to made deci sions (see, e.g., Buchanan 1959). Or why do we have to be reminded that "the impli ca tion of the Coase the o rem is that the ini tial dis tri bu tion of prop erty rights is a nec es sary con di tion of mar ket trans ac tions" (221)? ...
... In addition, when a need exists, individuals may find a collective but private way to deal with it (e.g. Buchanan, 1959). externality does not mean that individuals perceive that something has to be done about it. ...
This symposium is based on a workshop organized (online) on 24–25 February 2021 and sponsored by World Interdisciplinary Network for Institutional Research (WINIR). In this introduction, we stress the institutional dimension of repugnance, and show how it is dealt with in the papers gathered in the symposium. Kimberly Krawiec analyses repugnance in connection with externalities, and shows that contrary to what the ‘corruption theorists’ say, creating repugnant markets does not undermine social values. Peter Cserne shows that, in order to ensure a fully efficient regulation of repugnant behaviours, a transversal view combining the economic and legal approach to repugnance is necessary. The last two papers focus on entrepreneurship. Erwin Dekker and Julien Gradoz analyse the management of repugnance: how two firms, producing goods considered repugnant, adopt strategic behaviour to offset the costs generated by repugnance. Darcy W. E. Allen, Chris Berg and Sinclair Davidson take the analysis one step further and examine how ‘evasive entrepreneurs’ use repugnance as profit opportunity. Their innovations challenge social norms and the boundaries of what is viewed as repugnant in the society at large.
... Este debate se reaviva con La metodología de la economía positiva (1953) de Milton Friedman, quien expone más claramente la posición positivista llamando a distinguir entre el comportamiento científico y no científico de los economistas (Buchanan, 1959). ...
Resumen La eponimia en economía suele estar presente a lo largo de la historia del pensamiento. El "tenedor de Hume" no es la excepción. Atribuyéndose en libros de textos únicamente a John Neville Keynes, la dicotomía ser-debe ser halla sus raíces en el pensamiento del escocés David Hume quien coloca la piedra angular en una trayectoria representacional que atraviesa el pensamiento de los clásicos hasta ser recogida y explicitada por Keynes padre. Atribuible generalmente al pensamiento ortodoxo, la dicotomía difiere del pensamiento heterodoxo donde se levantan voces discordantes. Sin embargo, la dicotomía logra zanjar las dificultades y asoma su nariz con nueva vestimenta en la teoría de la elección racional. Este trabajo analiza desde el aspecto epistemológico el surgimiento y evolución del "tenedor de Hume" el cual, se esboza, se halla implícito a lo largo del pensamiento económico. Clasificación JEL: B3-B4 Introducción La discusión contemporánea sobre las nociones de positivo y normativo en economía halla su raíz en David Hume (1711-1776). La "dicotomía de Hume", "el tenedor de Hume (Hume's forke)" y "la guillotina de Hume" (Hands, 2009) entonces está enraizada en la filosofía donde sigue siendo tema de debate continuo (Searle, 1965, 2001). Sin embargo, la realidad histórica de "la dicotomía de Hume" con el transcurso del tiempo deja de ser fiel a su génesis desde que se la atribuye comúnmente a John Neville Keynes. La eponimia expuesta no es de extrañar. Utilizando epónimos cuya función es asignar reconocimiento a los economistas por su trabajo académico en el avance en el conocimiento en el área de la economía matemática y la econometría principalmente,
... The two Nixon task forces with which Buchanan engaged were in tension with each other because they exhibited quite different versions of what Buchanan (1959), in his article 'Positive economics, welfare economics, and political economy', called the 'social role of the economist'. 34 Criticising both the old and new welfare economics, Buchanan (1959: 127) argued that without objective ethical criteria, 'the economist qua scientist is unable to recommend'. ...
This article explores James M. Buchanan’s contributions to urban economics and urban public finance. Buchanan never self-identified as an ‘urban economist’, so his contributions to the field have blended into his broader body of work on public finance and externalities. However, in a series of papers in the 1960s and 1970s, Buchanan developed an urban fiscal club framework for thinking about urban problems that he used to analyse cities’ tax policy and the negative externalities of congestion, crime and pollution. By drawing out those ideas and their relation to each other, we can reconstruct Buchanan as an urban economist. This reconstruction casts new light on Buchanan’s service with several academic and federal urban policy commissions, including the Committee on Urban Public Expenditures and Richard Nixon’s Task Force on Urban Affairs and Task Force on Model Cities. Buchanan’s interest in urban economics has roots in an often-ignored member of his dissertation committee, Harvey Perloff. Perloff’s joint appointment with the Chicago Planning Program brought Buchanan into contact with several urban planners and urban economists who would continue to engage him in urban policy work throughout his career.
... 29. See J. M.Buchanan (1959), J. M.Buchanan (1962) and J. M.Buchanan (2004). ...
The paper examines how theoretical misunderstandings of Karl Marx’s theory of value have affected scholarly debates on sweatshops and labour-exploitation more broadly. Participants to these debates tend to overlook the distinction between the form of value and the substance of value. The paper further analyses problems with an exchange-based conceptualization of the labour-process, adopted by many sweatshop-defenders. Rather than posit Marx’s own perspective as the exclusively correct position, this paper seeks to foster a more informed dialogue on the issue of labour-exploitation in global sweatshops.
... In the earlier economic tradition, the state was often modeled with an impartial social welfare function. An important public choice critique of this perspective is that policy is never created by an omnipotent and omniscient actor but rather evolves within a political context (Buchanan 1959). Therefore, a social welfare function is not a useful concept, not even as a model, since it gives the wrong impression of how policy evolves. ...
Within the field of innovation studies, researchers have identified systematic failures that hamper investment in R&D, innovation, and growth. Accordingly, researchers in this field often seek to provide policy recommendations on how to alleviate these failures. However, previous discussions have often been lacking considerations to the risks of political failures, meaning that policies fail to achieve their stated goals in a systematic manner. In response to this gap, this article aims to illustrate the concept of political failure and its relevance for innovation research. This is done by both discussing how political failure can impact innovation policy and by reviewing the prevalence of any discussions of political failure among top-ranked journals on innovation for the period 2010–2019, a total of 7161 articles. The results show that consideration of political failure is scarce, with a small number of papers that have a substantial analysis of political failures. If the awareness of political failures could be increased, this could lead to better policy recommendations with a more nuanced discussion of the risks and limitations of public policy.
... Notes 9. This cybernetic understanding of emergent social needs also drove neoliberal political theorists' pragmatic reformulations of political economy (see, for example, Buchanan, 1959)-a phenomenon sociologists and anthropologists have described in terms of the dissolution of the social (Collier, 2011;Rose, 1996) 10. See also Anderson (2016) on related "neoliberal affects." ...
In this article, we seek to open up for critical debate disciplinary narratives that center the “synthesis” qualities of geographic thought. Proponents of Geography often emphasize its integrative, synthesis approach to human–environment relations to underline its value to interdisciplinary research initiatives addressing critical real-world issues such as climate change. But there are multiple styles of knowledge synthesis at work within academia and beyond, and they have contradictory ethical and epistemological effects. More specifically, synthesis is on the rise, but it is not Geography’s synthesis-as-understanding. Rather, an increasingly dominant cybernetic sociotechnical imaginary is installing a specific notion of synthesis—“synthesis-as-solution”—into universities, transforming both the production of knowledge and the institutional management and technological manifestation of that production. This cybernetic sociotechnical imaginary constrains research ethically and epistemologically to reduce knowledge to the synthesizable information flows and continuous innovation that characterize cybernetic control. In this context, non-conforming research—that is, research that disrupts or disdains such smooth synthesis—risks being labeled unprofessional, unimportant, and obsolescent and marginalized institutionally. Geographic disciplinary narratives that unreflexively celebrate synthesis thus risk producing a paradoxical future for Geography, one in which more space for different modes of knowledge production is created, but the type of difference recognized and affirmed is severely constrained. There is a pressing need for geographers to pay more attention to the practices and contexts in which we create disciplinary narratives because, like the content of our knowledge production, they can either challenge or reinforce a cybernetic sociotechnical imaginary.
... 6 Approached as a distinct style of thought, designerly synthesis has strongly influenced heterodox thought in several fields. For example, field-defining work by scholars in new institutional economics (Buchanan, 1959;Ostrom, 1990Ostrom, , 2009, and ecology and environmental management (Holling, 1995(Holling, , 2001Gunderson and Holling, 2002;Lee, 1993) Accepted Article explicitly drew on designerly sensibilities to recalibrate what "science" could be in economics and ecology, and how science could be practiced in relation to complex or "wicked" problems (Rittel and Webber, 1973). ...
In April of 2019, the Rockefeller Foundation’s “100 Resilient Cities” (100RC) program abruptly shuttered, surprising program proponents and critics alike. In this paper, we explore why this happened, why some styles of geographical critique could not anticipate 100RC’s closure, and what this inability means for dominant strands of critical geographic analysis. To answer these questions, we bring literature on the biopolitics of resilience, technopolitics, and Black geographies to bear on the case of Greater Miami resilience planning. We argue that answers to these questions revolve around the designerly roots of resilience thinking, whose distinct intellectual lineage conventional critical approaches have struggled to pick up on. We show how, on the one hand, design practices of synthesis in Greater Miami attempted to frame and instrumentalize Black histories of and experiences with racial and environmental violence as bounded knowledge that could improve the functioning of complex systems. On the other hand, synthesis created overflowings: opaque knowledges and experiences that resist the framing process and continue to mediate political battles over what resilience in Greater Miami practically becomes. Based on the case, we propose that an inductive style of critique that traces processes of framing and overflowing can help advance critical geographic analysis. As we illustrate in the paper, this mode of critique pays specific attention to the opaque, historically and contextually‐specific knowledges and experiences that refuse to be framed or synthesized, and work to counter‐frame dominant conceptions of resilience—critical and conventional alike.
This paper offers an economic case for practical pacifism. Practical pacifism, in contrast to absolute pacifism, recognizes that, while it is possible that state-led war may be justified in some cases, it is extremely difficult to determine if any single instance of war is justified. This leads to a default position of pacifism. Using the tools of economics, we detail the main ways that political institutions are likely to fail and cause harm through warmaking-related activities. Our focus is on the epistemic constraints and incentives facing government actors, as well as the diverse costs and perverse consequences of warmaking. Taking these factors into account strengthens the case for practical pacifism. To date, economists have not engaged the literature on practical pacifism and scholars studying pacifism have not engaged the economic scholarship on political institutions and government failure. Our contribution is to connect the two.
James Buchanan's normative theory of political exchange would justify debt repudiation when debt finances the consumption of a majority. He also insisted that each generation, as a group, deserves an equal starting point. Would this theory of political exchange justify reparations to Black Americans for state actions that caused intergenerational harm? We see many similarities between the cases.
In the 1950s, Buchanan proposed an approach to public debt rooted in individual calculus that challenged the prevailing Keynesian orthodoxy. In addition to the Italian tradition, Buchanan drew in important ways on the intellectual heritage of Knight, Simons, and Wicksell to advance an alternative narrative of public debt that considered both the decision-making process and the long-run implications of sustained public debt. By orientating his approach in an individualist rather than organic conception of the state, Buchanan not only provided a logical structure by which to evaluate debt decisions but also established an ethical argument against cross-generational debt based on the idea of voluntary consent.
In Chapter 5, the normative-ethical evaluation of international development is explored with development being defined as a process between means (institutions and policy instruments) and ends (objectives and outcomes). Normative-ethical analysis evaluates this relationship. The chapter explains why positive economics is penetrated by normative-ethical analysis and addresses the position that the normative nature of neoclassical economics is principally represented by social choice theory and welfare economics. In turn, international development theory and policy are associated with the dominant normative-ethical dimension of neoclassical economics. The chapter also offers a clear view of the normative-ethical goals and strategies in international development from the angle of development ethics as an alternative normative-ethical proposal to neoclassical economics and neoliberalism.
The purpose of this paper is to present “What Should Economists Do?”, an article written by James Buchanan and published in 1964, in an historical perspective. We put forward an important point, namely the opposition with Ludwig von Mises, and Buchanan’s attempt at differentiating his approach from Mises. Instead of in addition to Robbins, that he nominally targeted, Buchanan was actually criticizing Mises. Buchanan thus defined economics in a very specific way, as a science that studies exchange but only when it results from a desire (or a propensity) to exchange.
Scholars of law and economics, or the economic analysis of law, apply the analytic concepts of economics to understand the causes, consequences, and optimal design of the law. Law and economics used to have a clear focus on the analysis of private law. Research on public law, including constitutional law, is a more recent development. Economists who were unhappy with the assumption of conventional economics whereby all relevant ‘rules of the game’ are given and that decisions have to be taken under these given (constitutional) rules, initiated the study of constitutional rules from an economic point of view. Scholars of constitutional economics, also known as constitutional political economy or constitutional law and economics, have broadened the scope of research by analyzing both the design of basic rule systems (constitutions) as well as the effects of these alternative basic rules using the standard method of economics, i.e., rational choice.
Economics is frequently criticised for relying on a narrow and limited view of human beings. This may be particularly true of economic analyses of non-market decisions in which individuals often appear reduced to self-interested automata who maximise a given objective function. In this article, we show that the approach of one of the founders of public choice and constitutional political economy, James Buchanan, contradicts this view. Even though he assumed individuals were rational and self-interested, Buchanan nevertheless had a sophisticated view of human nature. He distinguished between a natural and artifactual man, but also between (what we term) symmetrical and asymmetrical man. This is not only important to demonstrate the richness of the ontology of an influential economist, but also because, we also show, Buchanan’s public choice and constitutional economics cannot be understood without a reference to this ontology.
Current technological advances have revived the old socialist calculation debate. While the arguments on the socialist side appear to be backed by exciting technological developments, the pro‐market camp still mainly relies on the classical thinking of the Austrian school. A reasonable way to reinvigorate the free‐market thesis is to look at the ends of economic calculations, intentionally overlooked during the classical period of the debate. A valuable supplement to the contemporary pro‐market position could be found in the ordoliberal vision that emphasised the interdependence of various spheres and the power problem.
Buchanan believed that individuals are fundamentally willing to cooperate with others. It was at the center of his works in public finance in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and also crucial to his work in public choice in the 1960s. The purpose of this book is to show which forms this belief took over these two decades or so, and to explain the continuity between these forms. We adopt a historical approach that allows us to recount the story of how Buchanan came to develop a theory of collective action, including his conception of cooperation in small groups, to implement a technical condition about the pricing of public goods he defended early in his career. We describe the different steps Buchanan took, the encounters that influenced him, and the events and challenges that led him to revise his views to make room for this fundamental philosophical conviction.
This paper revisits the debates about the meaning of economic efficiency, and the moral dilemmas associated with using Kaldor-Hicks efficiency or Pareto efficiency for policy analysis. I lay out the best case for efficiency as meta-value, and highlight that it still does not allow us to evade the need to account for conflict and violence. Contrary to many accounts, I argue that Pareto efficiency is a poor normative criterion, while, nonetheless, offering a valuable tool for positive institutional analysis. Pareto efficiency is important not because it tells us what we should do, but because it tells us why injustice persists and reform is often difficult. Kaldor-Hicks efficiency provides a better normative guideline, despite its known problems in terms of inter-personal utility comparisons. Using it as a guide, we can see why (a) we should protect federalism and further build a polycentric order of overlapping governments in which the movement of capital and people is easier; (b) why full-blown anarchy is probably not the ideal; and (c) why we should use auctions more (in particular quadratic voting) and electoral democracy less.
This Element explores the topics of terrorism, counterterrorism, and the US government's war on terror following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. It draw on insights from Austrian and public choice economics. First, the foundations of the economics of terrorism are discussed emphasizing that the behaviors of terrorists and counter-terrorists are purposeful and goal-oriented. Then, the economics of counterterrorism policies and the importance of institutional change is considered. Next, the three dilemmas facing liberal societies as it relates to counterterrorism efforts is focused on. The Element then provides an assessment of the US government's war on terror. It discusses the origins of the war, discuss whether it can be judged a success or failure, and consider some of the main effects both abroad and within the United States. The final chapter concludes with a discussion of several areas for future research.
James Buchanan was a fervent advocate of a non-discriminatory politics. However, he translated his views on constitutional political economy into ( de jure ) constitutional design in an insufficiently thoughtful way. Simply writing non-discriminatory politics into a Constitution is unlikely to have the desired effect. All Constitutional language is open to interpretation and political entrepreneurs will be ready to push interpretation in their favoured directions. The history of US Constitutional law bears this out. This does not necessarily discount Buchanan's quest for constitutionalized non-discriminatory politics. However, it does mean that it must be tempered by realistic concerns regarding constitutional design. With this in mind, I suggest that focusing on procedural, rather than substantive, Constitutional provisions may be more fruitful.
In her ‘Markets, repugnance, and externalities’ (2022), Kimberly Krawiec notes that the so-called corruption theorists fail to provide evidence that the adoption of repugnant behaviours or commodification destroy social values. She adds that, the values repugnant behaviours are supposed to destroy may even be reinforced after a market has been created. The explanation she explores is that the creation of a market never goes without debates that allow the society to ponder the values it stands for. We suggest an alternative view on the lack of evidence Krawiec identifies. Our starting point is Krawiec's interpretation of repugnance in terms of externalities. We claim that an analysis of repugnance based on externalities requires a characterization of what an externality is, which is rarely done. We show that economists use two opposed definitions of externalities, an objective and a subjective one, and then show what it implies for an analysis of repugnance and justify why the corruption thesis is not always verified empirically.
James M. Buchanan's politics-as-exchange retrospectively conceptualized formal institutions emerging from bilateral agreements to establish reciprocal rights and prospectively guided constitutional entrepreneurs to broker Pareto-superior reforms that had unanimous consent. Buchanan believed this conceptualization of politics-as-exchange was necessitated by his ontological–methodological individualism and would initiate a new era of consensual politics, but it is argued it led to illiberal conclusions that reflected dissonance between his Kantian individualism and Humean subjectivism. It meant, for example, that slavery was characterized as a bilateral agreement between very unequal parties and it is argued it logically implied abolition required the consent of slaveowners. But Buchanan's ontology was compatible with the introduction into his framework of a right of exit that would have differentiated between exchanges with and without the sword to produce a consistent liberal constitutionalism.
Novel externalities are social activities for which the emerging cost (or benefit) of the spillover is unknown and must be discovered. Negative novel externalities have regained international salience following the COVID-19 pandemic. Such cases frequently are invoked as evidence of the limits of liberal political economy for dealing with public emergencies. Through a re-reading of classical political economy with the modern state’s confrontation with infectious disease in mind, we defend the comparative efficacy of liberal democracy against authoritarian alternatives for coping with these social problems. Effective responses to novel externalities require producing and updating trustworthy public information and an independent scientific community to validate and interpret it. Those epistemic capacities are prevalent in liberal democratic regimes with multiple sources of political power, an independent civil society, and practices of academic freedom. Our analysis highlights the theoretical value of polycentrism and self-governance beyond their more familiar role, of increasing accountability and competition in the provision of local public goods, towards facilitating effective national policy.
"Cooperative banking in Poland and selected European Union countries – economic, organizational and social perspectives"
The subject of the book concerns cooperative banks as both economic and social entities. The functioning of cooperative banks was examined based on the conceptual framework of the social economy. The book presents models of cooperative banking in selected countries of the European Union and also proposes an original model of cooperative banking in Poland. The author developed a theoretical behavioral model of a cooperative bank covering its economic and social goals. He compared cooperative banks in Poland with their commercial counterparts in terms of operational efficiency. In addition, he identified the strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats of cooperative banks as well as their future challenges.
"Bankowość spółdzielcza w Polsce i wybranych krajach Unii Europejskiej – wymiar ekonomiczny, organizacyjny i społeczny"
Przedmiotem monografii naukowej są banki spółdzielcze jako podmioty gospodarcze i społeczne. Ukazano w niej modele bankowości spółdzielczej w wybranych krajach Unii Europejskiej oraz zaproponowano nowy model funkcjonowania bankowości spółdzielczej w Polsce. Opracowano teoretyczny model behawioralny banku spółdzielczego, uwzględniający cele ekonomiczne i społeczne, porównano efektywność działania między bankami spółdzielczymi a bankami komercyjnymi w Polsce, zbadano funkcjonowanie banków spółdzielczych w świetle koncepcji ekonomii społecznej, zidentyfikowano mocne i słabe strony oraz szanse i zagrożenia banków spółdzielczych, jak również wskazano wyzwania, przed którymi stoją one w przyszłości.
For a surface stream, it is clear when the safe yield is exceeded: the stream or reservoir is empty. Unlike a surface-water reservoir, an aquifer managed sustainably generally only relies on inflows, not storage, to meet water demands. This paradox—an immense volume of water in storage compared to the volume of inflow or the allowable sustainable production—is what makes it easy for groundwater producers to produce more than sustainable amounts of groundwater. Depending on the aquifer, consequences of nonsustainable production may not be felt for decades, such as in the Ogallala Aquifer. In practice, many aquifers are not produced sustainably. Standard economic theory says that there is greater economic benefit to draining aquifers in the short term rather than managing them sustainably for the long term. However, most economic analyses do not consider what economists call externalities—positive or negative consequences, intended or not, not considered in the economic analysis. Impacts to the environment and future generations are generally not considered if not actively dismissed. Economic intangibles concerning culture and place also have a role in making decisions. Just as science provides information for policymakers to consider, so does economics and other concerns.
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