James M. Buchanan
American economist, recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics (1919–2013)
James McGill Buchanan Jr. ( bew-KAN-ən; October 3, 1919 – January 9, 2013) was an American economist known for his work on public choice theory originally outlined in his most famous work, The Calculus of Consent, co-authored with Gordon Tullock in 1962. He continued to develop the theory, eventually receiving the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986.
Buchanan's work initiated research on how politicians' and bureaucrats' self-interest, utility maximization, and other non-wealth-maximizing considerations affect their decision-making. He was a member of the Board of Advisors of The Independent Institute as well as of the Institute of Economic Affairs, a member of the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) and MPS president from 1984 to 1986, a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute, and professor at George Mason University.
Early life and education
Buchanan was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the eldest of the three children of Lila (née Scott) and James Buchanan. His paternal grandfather, John P. Buchanan, was governor of Tennessee from 1891 to 1893. He was a great-great-grandson of Major John Buchanan, an early Tennessee settler and the founder of Buchanan's Station; a grand-nephew of James S. Buchanan, former president of the University of Oklahoma; and a fourth cousin once removed of Gordon Anderson, the widower of screen star Sondra Locke.
According to Buchanan's 1992 memoir, when his father, James Buchanan Sr., married in 1918 and began his family he borrowed heavily to mechanize and improve the farm, including the acquisition of a herd of Jersey cattle. The Buchanan farm suffered during the 1920s—by the time James Buchanan Jr.
The public source identifies “James M. Buchanan” as american economist, recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics (1919–2013). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around James, Buchanan and American.
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This entry incorporates text from “James M. Buchanan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.