Geoffrey Brennan

This monumental twenty-volume series presents the writings of James M. Buchanan, one of the great twentieth-century scholars of liberty. Buchanan, the Nobel laureate in Economics in 1986, has much wisdom to offer—not just to academics and economists—but to all who seek to understand the challenges and opportunities of governance in our age. The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan includes…

In 1986, James M. Buchanan was awarded the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Universally respected as one of the founders of the “public choice” school of economics, he is the author of numerous books and hundreds of articles in the areas of public finance, public choice, constitutional economics, and economic philosophy. He is best known for such works…

In his foreword, Geoffrey Brennan states, “The papers in this volume represent a coherent set of pieces focused on aspects of public-expenditure theory and constitute all of Buchanan’s papers in this area.” Buchanan’s work on the subject of what governments should do and his insistence on Knut Wicksell’s ideal that taxation and public expenditure be integrated topics have contributed significantly…

The thirty-one papers presented in this volume offer scholars and general readers alike a comprehensive introduction to the work of one of the greatest economists of the modern era. Many of Buchanan’s most important essays are gathered in this inaugural volume of the twenty-volume series from Liberty Fund of his Collected Works. The essays are arranged thematically and so present…

Public Principles of Public Debt is one of James M. Buchanan’s most important and influential books. The radical idea he conceived was that our reliance on public debt has amassed a sort of orthodoxy that is commonly—and needlessly—assumed by taxpayers, by politicians, and by economists themselves. Buchanan dismisses the nearly universal belief (which continues to this day) that the burden…

In his foreword, Robert D. Tollison identifies the main objective of Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan’s The Reason of Rules: “. . . a book-length attempt to focus the energies of economists and other social analysts on the nature and function of the rules under which ordinary political life and market life function.” In persuasive style, Brennan and Buchanan…