James M. Buchanan co-founded the field of Public Choice. He was influenced by Austrian economics, and in turn influenced Austrian economics. In particular, he advanced the understanding of subjectivist cost theory. His individualist approach to public policy making has been adopted by many...

The most important distinction between Virginia political economy (VPE) and the other branches of public choice scholarship is a close affinity of the former to Austrian economics. Contributions in both the Virginia and the Vienna (Austrian) traditions have emphasized this connection and...

In this paper, which is concerned with philosophical methodology as it might affect social science and ethics, the endeavor is to explore the depth and implications of Buchanan’s interest in Spinoza. After establishing their connection, the paper explores the parallels between Spinoza’s...

In light of Wittman (<CitationRef CitationID="CR86">1995</CitationRef>) and Caplan (<CitationRef CitationID="CR30">2007</CitationRef>) this paper contends that the rational-choice approach to political science (“Public Choice theory”) has reached a dead end. By critiquing their treatment of rationality, knowledge assumptions, and views of the democratic process, an alternative is...</citationref></citationref>

A review essay on Christopher Coyne’s Doing Bad by Doing Good: Why Humanitarian Action Fails (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013). The book considers whether state-led humanitarian actions can be expected to succeed in reducing human suffering. Finding that as a rule they cannot be...

This paper seeks to identify factors which could plausibly have led to the contractionary welfare reform initiatives begun at the state and federal levels in the U.S. in the 1990s, initiatives concentrated on the AFDC program. A review of aggregate time series evidence, cross-section regression...

We show that when democratic and autocratic governments peacefully compete for governance over the same jurisdiction the autocratic has a natural advantage. The autocratic government, which unambiguously reduces welfare for everyone except the autocrat, will drive the competing democratic...