IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ris/nobelp/1986_001.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Constitution of Economic Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Buchanan, James M.

    (George Mason University)

Abstract

One of the most exciting intellectual moments of my career was my 1984 discovery of Knut Wicksell's unknown and untranslated dissertation, Finanztheoretische Untersuchungen, buried in the dusty stacks of Chicago's old Harper Library. Only the immediate post-dissertation leisure of an academic novice allowed for the browsing that produced my own dramatic example of learning by serendipity. Wicksell's new principle of justice in taxation gave me a tremendous surge of self-confidence. Wicksell, who was an established figure in the history of economic ideas, challenged the orthodoxy of public finance theory along lines that were congenial with my own developing stream of critical consciousness. From that moment in Chicago, I took on the determination to make Wicksell's contribution known to a wider audience, and I commenced immediately a translation effort that took some time and considerable help from Elizabeth Henderson, before final publication.

Suggested Citation

  • Buchanan, James M., 1986. "The Constitution of Economic Policy," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 1986-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:nobelp:1986_001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1986/buchanan-lecture.html
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic Policy;

    JEL classification:

    • H10 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - General

    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:ris:nobelp:1986_001. 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: RePEc Team (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nobelprize.org/ .

    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.