I did find the term in a review of Vaughn’s essay from 1982 by Bruce Caldwell, I will follow up on this.

“…(to borrow a phrase from another context and time) Austrian “fellow travelers.”

For clarification, is the “Fellow traveler” description original to Vaughn (1994 – Austrian Economics in America)? It appears in quotes there as well. Is there a way to cite this, was this a self-imposed description by Buchanan or some other such back story?

I would be interested in detailing the history of this distinction for my own knowledge.

He understands and considers fundamental the “subjectivist” quality to cost, that it has no measurable or “objective” quality to it. It always remains the “might-have-been” in the actor’s mind that nonetheless is the alternative “weight” that is on the other side of the scale when the decision has been made to do something else instead.

But he is bothered that this completely undermines what he considers to be an equally reasonable persuit of some degree of empirical “predictability” and content.

This tension is what has made it difficult for Buchanan to say that he is an “Austrian” or to fully endorse the Austrian approach.

Like many mainstream economists, when confronted with a consistent Austrian perspective he raises his hands in frustration and says, “Then what, as economists, are we supposed to do?” (What is our “research program,” what is is “operationally meaningful,” then, in economics?).

That question is the neo-classical element that he has not been able to get beyond. And I say this as someone who, as an “Austrian,” has learned a great deal of much value from Buchanan.

Richard Ebeling

The following is from a 1983 essay by Buchanan:

“As it is practiced in 1983, economics is a science without purpose or meaning. It has allowed itself to become captive of the technical tools that it employs without keepiing track of just what it is that the tools are to be used for. In a very real sense, the economists of the 1980s are illiterate in basic principles of their own discipline. . . Their motivation is not normative; they seem to be ideological eunuchs. Their interest lies in the purely intellectual properties of the models with which they work, and they seem to get their kicks from the discovery of proofs of propositions relevant only to their own fantasy land. . . Our graduate schools are producing higher trained, highly intelligent technicans who are blissfully ignorant of the whole purpose of their alleged discipline. They feel no moral obligation to convey and transmit to their students any understanding of the social process through which a society of free persons can be organized without overt conflict while at the same time using resources with tolerable efficiency.”

This is a rather damning statement. And one that I think for the most part would still apply to the profession of economics as it is taught and practiced almost 30 years after Buchanan wrote these words.

Richard Ebeling

However, one can see that Buchanan’s work is “normative” in his constitutional political economy. But it is a careful dance between the pure positive analysis of play within rules, and the examination of alternative rules that may improve play. Most critics miss the tacking back and forth in Buchanan’s constitutional exercise, and they also misunderstand his use of the homoeconomicus assumption in constitutional structure. It is not a description of man, but an assumption in building robust constructions against worst-case situations.

On the original post — the Chicago connection in Virginia is well-known, but it is first the “older” Chicago tradition (not Becker-Stigler) that is the connection for Buchanan and Tullock. Second, both Buchanan and Tullock credit Mises’s HUMAN ACTION with pointing them to the idea of studying politics from a methodologically individualist point of view.

Third, through Mont Pelerin and Volker Fund conferences they were exposed to Mises and Hayek, and in particular the various drafts of Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty.

Fourth, consider the work of products of Buchanan and Tullock and their connection to Austrian economics. Richard Wagner and Randy Holcombe stand out in this regard. But there are also people like Tom DiLorenzo, and also others such as Tyler Cowen and myself who have strong cross educational and research connections to the Virginia and Austrian traditions.

Fifth, for shameless self-promotion. I have written several essays over the years about this Viriginia/Austrian connection and even edited a volume of the RAE (with Ed Lopez) on this. I guess I would recommend my paper “James M. Buchanan and the Rebirth of Political Economy,” in Against the Grain: Dissent in Economics edited by Steve Pressman and Ric Holt (1998).

The conference at FEE in September should be an excellent discussion.

http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2007/04/24/frank-knight-and-the-chicago-school/

One of my favorite methodology quotes is this one from Knight (1956):

[T]he first fact to be recorded is that [economic] reality exists or “is there.” This fact cannot be proved or argued or “tested.” If anyone denies that men have interests or that “we” have a considerable amount of knowledge about them, economics and its entire works will simply be to such a person what the world of color is to the blind man. But there would still be one difference: a man who is physically, ocularly blind may still be rated of normal intelligence and in his right mind.

Hardly a Friedmanite position!

While many Austrians view Knight as a critic of Austrian Economics due to his challenge to Austrian capital theory and some other issues, in fact, on methodoligcal matters he was very close to the Austrian subjectivist, anti-positivist, anti-behaviorist approach.

Kinght’s 1924 essay on “The Limitations of the Scientific Method in Economics” comes very close to a “Misesian” perspective. And his 1956 collection, “On the History and Method of Economics” has several other essays in which his emphasis on these themes comes through.

Thus, to the extent that Buchanan in some of hiswritings often has an “Austrian” flavor it is due to the fact that he seemed to take Knight more seriously on these methodological issues than others who studied at the feet of the Chicago giants.

Richard Ebeling