IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/vep/journl/y2013v121i1p111-134.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

James Buchanan and the Economics of Constitutions

Author

Listed:
  • Andrea Villani

    (Dipartimento di Economia Internazionale, delle Istituzioni e dello Sviluppo, Universita` Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano)

Abstract

One of the most important debates in today’s economic policy is between Neo-Liberals supporters of free market and Neo-Keynesians supporting the fundamental relevance of public action. In this paper the James M. Buchanan’s role among the masters of neo-liberal politics is underlined. In his approach, market and political process founded on the exchange are considered good in themselves, and at the basis of the rationality of choice not only for the individual behaviour but also for public choices is set the individual, in a contractarian-constitutionalist perspective. Particularly Buchanan’s contributions in the economics of politics, and his role in the debate about justice are analysed and discussed here.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrea Villani, 2013. "James Buchanan and the Economics of Constitutions," Rivista Internazionale di Scienze Sociali, Vita e Pensiero, Pubblicazioni dell'Universita' Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, vol. 121(1), pages 111-134.
    • Handle: RePEc:vep:journl:y:2013:v:121:i:1:p:111-134
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://riss.vitaepensiero.it/scheda-articolo_digital/andrea-villani/james-buchanan-and-the-economics-of-constitutions-000518_2013_0001_0111-151049.html
    Download Restriction: Yes
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic Policy; Public Choice Perspective; Politics as Process; Social Contract and Constitution; Justice;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B29 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925 - - - Other
    • B41 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology - - - Economic Methodology

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:vep:journl:y:2013:v:121:i:1:p:111-134. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Vep - Vita e Pensiero (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.