James M. Buchanan

James McGill Buchanan Jr. (1919-2013) was an American economist who founded public choice theory, applying the same self-interest assumptions economists use to analyze market behavior to the behavior of voters, politicians and bureaucrats in political and bureaucratic decision-making. A 1949 paper first proposed that economists should examine their own assumptions about politics before prescribing 'good' taxation or spending policy, and his 1962 book with Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent, first outlined public choice theory in full. Buchanan built the Center for Study of Public Choice at George Mason University, developing what became known as the Virginia school of political economy, distinct from the Chicago school. He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986 for his development of the contractual and constitutional bases for the theory of economic and political decision making.