Part I: Biography
James McGill Buchanan was born on October 3, 1919 in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, USA. He enrolled in Middle Tennessee State College where he studied mathematics, English literature, and social sciences. There, he earned his B.A. degree in 1940. He then applied successfully for a graduate fellowship in economics at the University of Tennessee and earned a M.S. in 1941. In 1941 he embarked on active naval duty in the Pacific theater of World War II. He was awarded a Bronze Star for distinguished service. In 1946, Buchanan enrolled at the University of Chicago where he took courses with Frank H. Knight, Henry Schultz, and Simeon E. Leland. Knight's course on price theory converted him from socialism to free-market principles and provided him with a perspective on the market process.
After he earned Ph.D. in 1948, Buchanan stumbled across Knut Wicksell's book “Finanztheoretiche Untersuchungen”. He was inspired by the nature of its challenge to conventional public finance. Later Buchanan acknowledged the fundamental influence of Wicksell's work on the contributions that ultimately earned him the Nobel Prize. Elsewhere Buchanan has acknowledged the importance of Knight’s work. However, he rejected the orthodox economist’s elevation of allocative efficiency as an independent standard of evaluation (Buchanan 1992). In 1945, he married Ann Bakke Buchanan; the couple has no children.
James started his career at the University of Tennessee as associate professor. Then he worked at the University of Virginia as professor of economics from 1956 – 1968. …
