From subjectivism to constitutionalism: the intellectual journey of James M. Buchanan through his Italian heroes

To Geoffrey Brennan, Buchanan’s subjectivism was “subject to mood swings”. In my opinion, Buchanan’s subjectivism needs not to have been considered “loose” because his gnoseological theory, known as methodological individualism, claims that all evaluations originate from individuals and, as such, are subjective. The same critique could be lodged against Ferrara’s “cost of reproduction” idea for not being rigorously subjectivist. Although the “cost of reproduction” can be viewed as alternatives forgone in terms of goods not produced/consumed, in reality, they are foregone utilities. In that connection, it must be emphasized that the great merit of Buchanan is that of departing from the extreme subjectivism of Wiseman (1953) and Shackle (1961), which denies the existence of an objective empirical reality outside the individual.

According to Einaudi (1950), Ferrara towered over the Italian economic academy and defined him "Prince of XIX century economists".

In a comment on a draft paper of mine, Buchanan wrote “As you know, Ferrara is one of my own heroes, and I had as a lifelong project when I got back from Italy to translate some of Ferrara’s stuff into English, notably his prefaces to the classics, but, as many such ambitions, this one got somehow waylaid and I never go around to doing anything with it. But he should be better known among non-Italians and perhaps even among Italians.”.

Such utility losses are the only costs in which accountants are interested.

Eusepi (2019) provides a possible explanation for Viti de Marco’s contradictory statement. See also Eusepi and Wagner (2018).

It is somewhat surprising that not even Wicksell is mentioned in Cost and Choice (Buchanan 1969, p. 55). See also Eusepi (1991).

Buchanan himself explicitly confessed that initially he was not fully aware of how deeply de Viti de Marco influenced his analysis (Mosca 2016).

In an unpublished rejoinder, Buchanan accepted the validity of our critique.

One might think that we are facing a case of extraordinary public finance and, as such, it would involve a temporary deficit that does not conflict with the budget constraint, but with the annuity associated with such constraint (Einaudi 2012; Steve 1977; Eusepi 2018).

Although de Viti de Marco did not favor double taxation of savings, he justifies exception on the grounds of the benefit principle. Infrastructure spending supplies future benefits; hence, constitutional principles would be violated if present investors were taxed.

I owe this point to R. E. Wagner.