James Buchanan’s public debt theory: a rational reconstruction

Richard Wagner ()

Constitutional Political Economy, 2014, vol. 25, issue 3, 253-264

Abstract: James Buchanan’s Public Principles of Public Debt is universally associated with the claim that debt allows the cost of public activity to be shifted onto future generations. This claim treats a generation as a unitary and acting entity. Such treatment is standard fare for those macro theorists who work with representative agents and societal averages in place of the actual individuals who constitute a society. This treatment, however, conflicts with the central tenor of Buchanan’s scholarly oeuvre. This essay undertakes a rational reconstruction to render reasonable his claim about debt shifting, while also rendering it consistent with his oft-repeated claim that cost can be experienced only by individuals and never by such aggregates as generations. This reconstruction reveals a cleavage between approaching public debt through macro theory and approaching it through public finance. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Keywords: Public Principles of Public Debt; Burden of public debt; Morality of public debt; Debt default; Representative agent macro; Coalition-based macro; B22; D72; E62; H63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10602-014-9161-3 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:copoec:v:25:y:2014:i:3:p:253-264

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/10602/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10602-014-9161-3

Access Statistics for this article

Constitutional Political Economy is currently edited by Roger Congleton and Stefan Voigt

More articles in Constitutional Political Economy from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().