Written by James Buchanan in the early 1970s, “The Samaritan's Dilemma” is a pessimistic essay, marked by his author's negative views about the situation in Western societies at that time. Yet, the situation described in this essay also fits into Buchanan’s approach of cooperation and...

In a recent article, William Darity, M’Balou Camara, and Nancy MacLean (2023) argue that economist W.H. Hutt was a white supremacist. In the course of their analysis, Darity et al. refer to a claim Hutt made about “exclusive clubs”, that they link to James Buchanan’s article on clubs...

In this paper, we analyze the controversy that took place between Blum and Kalven, and Calabresi around rationality or, more broadly, how individuals behave. We analyze how their respective conception regarding this specific aspect was included in their analyses about what economics could say...

We present a short history of the Virginia School of Political Economy in its institutional settings of University of Virginia (UVA), Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, or Virginia Tech (VPI), and George Mason University (GMU). We discuss the original research and educational...

This article introduces Buchanan's comment on Tiebout's "A Pure Theory of Local Public Expenditures". It helps us to understand the nature of the relationship between Buchanan and Tiebout. Usually, it is claimed that Buchanan modeled Tiebout's insights, that there exists a Buchanan-Tiebout...

The purpose of this note is to discuss libertarian paternalism from the perspective of the concept of “freedom of choice”. For libertarian paternalists, freedom remains defined as it is defined by neo-classical economists and “consent” to the conditions of choice is never envisaged as an...