Debt and Taxes

by James M. Buchanan

Overview

While this volume presents the important writings of James M. Buchanan on taxation and debt, Geoffrey Brennan makes it clear in the foreword that the thrust of Buchanan’s work in this area has been to integrate theories of taxation and debt with public-expenditure theory. Therefore, the editors strongly urge that the present volume on taxation and debt be read in tandem with the subsequent Volume 15, Externalities and Public Expenditure Theory.

Included in this present volume are thirty-five important writings by Buchanan on taxation and debt. These are grouped into the following major subject categories:

1. Taxation, Politics, and Public Choice
2. Earmarking and Incidence in Democratic Process
3. Analytical and Ethical Foundations of Tax Limits
4. The Fiscal Constitution
5. Confessions of a Burden Monger
6. Ricardian Equivalence
7. The Constitution of a Debt-Free Polity

As Geoffrey Brennan points out in the foreword to this volume, “Although James Buchanan’s interests are wide-ranging, the core of his professional reputation as an economist and the origin of much of his broader thinking lie in public economics—in engagement with the questions of what governments do and how governments should properly finance what they do.” This volume together with its partner subsequent volume present clear and accessible insights into the rich economic work for which Buchanan is best known.

James M. Buchanan (1919–2013) was an eminent economist who won the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986 and was considered one of the greatest scholars of liberty in the twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780865972407
Publisher:	Liberty Fund, Incorporated
Publication date:	01/09/2001
Series:	The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan , #14
Edition description:	Volume 14
Pages:	565
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.50(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

Table of Contents

Foreword xi 1.Taxation, Politics, and Public Choice
Public Finance and Public Choice 3
Public Choice and Public Finance 25
Democratic Values in Taxation 36
Tax Reform a Political Choice 46
The Theory of Public Finance 54
Richard Musgrave, Public Finance, and Public Choice 64 2.Earmarking and Incidence in Democratic Process
The Economics of Earmarked Taxes 71
The Constitutional Economics of Earmarking 89
Fiscal Choice through Time: A Case for Indirect Taxation? (James M. Buchanan and Francesco Forte ) 101
Externality in Tax Response 121
On the Incidence of Tax Deductibility (James M. Buchanan and Mark V. Pauly) 134 3.Analytical and Ethical Foundations of Tax Limits
Towards a Tax Constitution for Leviathan (Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan) 151
The Logic of Tax Limits: Alternative Constitutional Constraints on the Power to Tax (Geoffrey Brennan and James Buchanan) 175
Proportional and Progressive Income Taxation with Utility-Maximizing Governments (James M. Buchanan and Roger Congleton ) 196
The Ethical Limits of Taxation 212
Coercive Taxation in Constitutional Contract 228
Constitutional Constraints on Governmental Taxing Power 250 4.The Fiscal Constitution
The Tax System as Social Overhead Capital: A Constitutional Perspective on Fiscal Norms (Geoffrey Brennan and James Buchanan) 269
Tax Reform without Tears (James Buchanan and Geoffrey Brennan) 284
The Political Efficiency of General Taxation 305
Rational Majoritarian Taxation of the Rich: With Increasing Returns and Capital Accumulation (James M. Buchanan and Yong J. Yoon) 321 5.Confessions of a Burden Monger
Debt, Public 343
Confessions of a Burden Monger 357
The Icons of Public Debt 361
Public Debt and Capital Formation 365 6.Ricardian Equivalence
Barro on the Ricardian Equivalence Theorem 385
The Logic of the Ricardian Equivalence Theorem (Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan) 392
The Incidence and Effects of Public Debt in the Absence of Fiscal Illusion (James M. Buchanan and Jennifer Roback) 408 7.The Constitution of a Debt-Free Polity
Organization Theory and Fiscal Economics: Society, State, and Public Debt (Viktor Vanberg and James M. Buchanan) 429
The Economic Consequences of the Deficit 445
Budgetary Bias in Post-Keynesian Politics: The Erosion and Potential Replacement of Fiscal Norms 455
Dialogues Concerning Fiscal Religion (James M. Buchanan and Richard E. Wagner) 473
The Moral Dimension of Debt Financing 486
The Balanced Budget Amendment: Clarifying the Arguments 493
The Ethics of Debt Default 519 Name Index 535 Subject Index 539