Special Issue on “James M. Buchanan and Public Debt” 

Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice 

Guest Editors: 

Andrew Farrant (Dickinson College) 

Marianne Johnson (University of Wisconsin Oshkosh) 

Extended abstract submission date: January 19, 2024 

Paper submission date: August 15, 2024 

Public debt constitutes an ongoing challenge to the fiscal and political stability of the modern nation state. Repayments, debt-to-GDP ratios, austerity, and fiscal policy priorities entangle with democratic concerns over political access, the use of public resources, and the ‘ability of current-period voters to saddle future generations with a debt burden. While some such as Lawrence Summers and Jason Furman have argued that the size of the debt is largely irrelevant for wealthy countries, global financial crises have illustrated that it is not only the indebted developing economies that need be concerned. 

James M. Buchanan’s contributions to the subject of public debt span the technical to the deeply philosophical. What they share is a common theme – that “the theory of public debt which is now accepted by most economists is, at base, fallacious” (1958, 3). Buchanan saw Keynesian fiscal theory as evidence of both government and expert failure. His efforts to understand how and why Keynesianism came to dominate political and economic discourse and practice provides subtext for much of the development of public choice. Indeed, Buchanan’s Public Principles of Public Debt (1958), Fiscal Theory and Political Economy (1960), and Democracy in Deficit (with Richard Wagner, 1977) are simultaneously contributions to public choice, public finance, political economy, political theory, and social philosophy. 

Buchanan’s theory of debt did not emerge in a vacuum. Indeed, he was deeply influenced by the Italian tradition on debt and democracy, particularly the work of Antonio de Viti de Marco, Luigi Einaudi, and Benvenuto Griziotti. Also important were Knut Wicksell’s (1896) contributions to the theory of just taxation and his analysis of the merits of a qualified unanimity voting rule as related to public debt. Buchanan’s midcentury writings met with significant pushback from mainstream Keynesians such as Abba Lerner (1959), Earl Rolph (1959), and Alvin Hansen (1959); historians of economics have complained of Buchanan’s misrepresentation of Keynes (e.g., Bateman 2005). Nonetheless, Buchanan’s work has been extended in important ways by Richard Wagner (2017), Geoffrey Brennan (with Buchanan, 1980), and Peter Boettke (2007 and 2014).  

This is a call to participate in a multi-disciplinary special issue of the Journal Public Finance and Public Choice (JPFPC) that analyzes Buchanan’s contributions to the topic of public debt. 

We seek papers on applied, theoretical, historiographical, and philosophical questions related to public debt from a variety of perspectives. Possible topics might include the following. 

• Debt in historical context; the growth of public debt in democratic countries, particularly in the context of the role of demographic shifts and/or the rise of the welfare state. 
• Public choice or public finance approaches to the study of emerging markets’ public debt. 
• The economics, politics, and/or ethics of debt default. 
• Debt and future generations, including as related to constitutionality, constitutional design, and concepts of contractual agreement.  
• The relevancy and usefulness of the analogy of the household to public finance and public debt. 
• Historiographical treatments of Keynesianism and debt, the political economy of debt, the Kennedy or Regan tax cuts, Thatcherism, or austerity theories. 
• The origins and influences of Buchanan’s treatment of public debt as public finance, as public choice, or as political/constitutional theory. 
• Reactions to Buchanan’s work on public debt by Keynesians, neo-Keynesians, post-Keynesians, or others.  

We are inviting abstracts (maximum 250 words) for this JPFPC special issue. Selected abstracts will be invited for submission of a full article, which will then undergo regular JPFPC double-blind anonymous peer review. Should insufficient papers be selected for a special issue, there will be a JPFPC special section. 

The submission date for the abstract is January 19, 2024 with final papers due August 15, 2024. Individuals interested in contributing should send abstracts to Professors Andrew Farrant ([log in to unmask]) and Marianne Johnson ([log in to unmask]). The guest editors, in coordination with the Editor in chief and Editor, will then select the abstracts to invite for submission to the special issue. Decisions on invitations to submit full articles will be made by February 15, 2024. 

Giampaolo Garzarelli, JPFPC Editor in chief 

Emma Galli, JPFPC Editor