Destutt de Tracy: A French Precursor of the Virginia School of Public Finance

Robert Dimand and Edwin G. West

Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 1989, vol. 11, issue 2, 210-215

Abstract: The relationship of the Virginia School of public finance to several important topics in the history of economic thought has attracted much recent attention. Barry Baysinger and Robert Tollison (1980), for instance, view William Ewart Gladstone's fiscal policies as an attempt to create a tax constitution to restrain a revenue-maximizing government. This position is in keeping with the evolving normative taxation principles of the Virginia School (see especially Brennan and Buchanan 1980). Charles Leathers (1986), on the other hand, argues that Gladstonian finance emphasized expenditure constraints, not constitutional tax constraints. Elias Khalil (1987) meanwhile, contrasts James Buchanan's methodological individualism with the “nonseparable” approach of Sir James Steuart (1767), which led Steuart to approve of a large degree of state intervention in the economy. While these essays either find past policies that conform to Virginia School principles or else find past economic theorists with sharply different approaches, they have not noted a striking anticipation of Buchanan's view of public debts by Antonine Louis Claude Destutt de Tracy (1754–1836).

Date: 1989
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:jhisec:v:11:y:1989:i:02:p:210-215_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of the History of Economic Thought from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().