|Peter Boettke|
Last fall (2010) the Fund for the Study of Spontaneous Order sponsored a conference to honor the contributions of James M. Buchanan to economics, political economy, and social philosophy.
The papers from that conference have been published in Journal Economic Behavior & Organization. Contributors include: Amartya Sen, Lin Ostrom, Tim Besley, Michael Munger, Stefan Voigt, Georg Vanberg, Hartmut Kliemt, Alain Marciano, Karen Horn, Steve Horwitz, Chris Coyne and Pete Leeson. Chances are that your library subscribes to JEBO since the journal is one of the high impact factor journals in economics. But if not, please consider requesting your library to subscribe and get this particular issue.
An earlier pre-print of my contribution to the issue can be found at SSRN and is entitled -- "Teaching Economics, Appreciating Spontaneous Order, and Economics as a Public Science."
You'll be happy to know that we spent some time in my history of thought class tonight talking about the Smithian roots of Buchanan's work.
Unfortunately, you won't be happy to know we spent even more time talking about the Smithian roots of Krugman's work... but we were in Book IV for most of the evening, so that makes sense.
Posted by: Daniel Kuehn | October 10, 2011 at 10:26 PM
The first two are Nobel laureates, that's prestigious company. Speaking of which, any thoughts on the recent prize to those Minnesotans?
Posted by: TGGP | October 11, 2011 at 02:59 AM
I am always puzzled when proponents of neoclassical economics champion Frank Knight as their leader and teacher, especially when it is observed that his personal writings were so very critical of this "theory." See here:
http://austrianomnibus.blogspot.com/2011/03/beauty-of-heterodoxy-frank-h-knight.html
As this astute post notes, Frank Knight has done more than any other economist to question this author's faith in free markets, and I am inclined to agree.
Posted by: austrian away | October 11, 2011 at 12:29 PM
While Sargent and Sims spent time at Minnesota, they are to Minnesota sort of what Buchanan is to Chicago, devotees of the "old Minnesota." While many identify Sargent in particular as a leading exponent of rational expectations, he stopped believing in it over 20 years ago. In many ways this prize is one for bounded rationality, with Sargent authoring a book with that in its title nearly 20 years ago, and Sims's "rational inattention" clearly being a form of bounded rationality.
Oh, and congrats to Jim and the editors for the special issue in JEBO (of which I am not the editor anymore).
Posted by: Barkley Rosser | October 11, 2011 at 12:41 PM