Economists have traditionally shied away from theorizing about the public arena, ceding the terrain to political scientists. But not James McGill , Buchanan. He reasons that politicians and public servants act primarily to promote their own self-interest, not to serve some higher public good. They behave, he declares, much like consumers in a marketplace. For work stemming from that basic theory of political economy, Buchanan, 67, last week won the 1986 Nobel Prize for Economic Science. The Tennessee-born professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., is the 14th American to win the economics award since it was first given in...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
