Mason Remembers Nobel Laureate James M. Buchanan

James Buchanan outside Buchanan House, home of the Center for Public Choice on the Fairfax Campus. Photo by Evan Cantwell

James M. Buchanan, Mason distinguished professor emeritus of economics and advisory general director of the Center for Study of Public Choice died on Jan. 9 in Blacksburg, Va., after a brief illness. He was 93.

“I know the entire university community joins me in mourning the loss of Dr. James M. Buchanan,” says Mason President Ángel Cabrera. “As Mason’s — and Virginia’s — first Nobel laureate for economics in 1986, Professor Buchanan was transformational, not only for our Department of Economics, but for putting our young university on the national and international map.”

Buchanan received his doctorate from the University of Chicago in1948 and subsequently taught at the University of Tennessee; Florida State University; the University of Virginia; the University of California, Los Angeles; and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), where he established the Center for Study of Public Choice. He moved the center to Mason in 1983, when George W. Johnson was president.

In December 1986, Buchanan received the 1986 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for “his [Buchanan’s] development of the contractual and constitutional bases for the theory of economic and political decision-making [or public choice theory].”

“For a young, up-and-coming university, the excitement of Jim Buchanan winning the Nobel Prize was unimaginable,” recalls President Emeritus Johnson. “It had a tremendous impact on the university as a whole and on the reputation of the institution. I can’t say enough about Jim’s contributions to the university. He was a great fellow.”

Daniel Houser, the current chair of Mason’s Department of Economics and director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science, says, “In moving to Mason in the early 1980s, James Buchanan and his colleagues at the Center for Study of Public Choice provided the scholarly foundation upon which Mason economics has been built. He was exceptional in his academic excellence. He will be deeply missed.”

Awarded four honorary doctoral degrees from universities worldwide, and a distinguished fellow of the American Economic Association, Buchanan wrote or co-wrote more than a dozen books and hundreds of articles in the areas of public finance, public choice, constitutional economics and economic philosophy.

Buchanan’s book, “The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy,” which he wrote with Gordon Tullock, Mason professor emeritus of law and economics, is considered a classic work on the public choice theory.

Buchanan also is known for such works as “Fiscal Theory and Political Economy,” “Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan,” “Democracy in Deficit,” “The Power to Tax,” and “The Reason of Rules.”

Even with an established reputation as a brilliant thinker, Buchanan was a humble man, says Mason President Emeritus Alan Merten. “He was a good man, a kind man, and committed to his students and the faculty,” Merten says, adding, “He couldn’t believe he should be getting a Nobel Prize, because he said his ideas were so simple. He had trouble understanding all that attention.”

Buchanan’s wife, Anne Bakke Buchanan, died in 2005. They had no children. Buchanan is survived by two sisters, Lila Graue and Elizabeth Bradley, and three nephews, Doug Graue, Jim Whorley and Jeff Whorley.

In 2008, the Special Collections and Archives staff in University Libraries created a video about Buchanan, “Daring to Be Different, Reflections on the Life and Work of James Buchanan,” which is available online.

A memorial service in Buchanan’s honor is planned at Mason later this year.