The Virginia school of political economy is a term applied to a school of economic thought originating in universities of Virginia and mainly focusing on public choice theory, constitutional economics, and law and economics. It emerged first at the Thomas Jefferson Center at the University of Virginia established by James M. Buchanan and G. Warren Nutter in 1957. It was there that Ronald Coase formulated his famous theorem on the problem of social cost (1960) and that Buchanan and Gordon Tullock wrote The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracry (1962). In 1969, Buchanan, Tullock, and Charles J. Goetz established the Center for the Study of Public Choice at Virginia Tech, which moved with them to George Mason University in 1983. Other prominent scholars associated with the school include Dennis C. Mueller, Robert D. Tollison, Andrew B. Whinston, and Leland B. Yeager.
The Virginia approach to political economy focuses on comparing private and public sector institutions as imperfect alternatives. The Virginia approach is also favored by some economists of the Chicago and Austrian schools. Virginia School economists are often seen as 'fellow travelers' with Austrian economists, as members of both schools of economic thought generally favor free-market outcomes.
There are several main lines of research in the Virginia School. James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock were among the earliest economists to apply economic analysis to national constitutions. Tullock also founded the modern rent seeking literature. Mancur Olson founded modern research on collective action and special interest groups. Olson was not at GMU, Virginia, or Virginia Tech, but Virginia scholars tend to emphasize special interest group bias in government.
The Public Choice Society is an outgrowth of the Virginia School.
Famous quotes containing the words virginia, school, political and/or economy:
“Being blunt with your feelings is very American. In this big country, I can be as brash as New York, as hedonistic as Los Angeles, as sensuous as San Francisco, as brainy as Boston, as proper as Philadelphia, as brawny as Chicago, as warm as Palm Springs, as friendly as my adopted home town of Dallas, Fort Worth, and as peaceful as the inland waterway that rubs up against my former home in Virginia Beach.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“Anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison. It is the people brought up in the gay intimacy of the slums ... who find prison so soul-destroying.”
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)
“Genocide begins, however improbably, in the conviction that classes of biological distinction indisputably sanction social and political discrimination.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)
“Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them.... for really new ideas of any kind—no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be—there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)