Towards an Economics of Natural Equals

"1.1 Introduction Taken separately, the contributions of the best-known principals of the early Virginia School of Political Economy - James Buchanan, Gordon Tullock, and Ronald Coase - are monuments of twentieth century economics. Yet despite their longstanding collaborations, significant differences characterize the research programs of Buchanan, Tullock, and Coase. Other prominent members of the early Virginia School, especially Rutledge Vining and Warren Nutter, add even more variation to the so-called School, so much so that one wonders if they are properly characterized as a "School." The first question for a work on the Virginia School, then, is what beyond geographical proximity unites the works of Virginia political economists? Second, supposing a satisfactory answer to this question, how does the Virginia School relate to orthodox economics? As this study unfolds, it will become clear that, notwithstanding significant differences of approach and research questions, unifying threads run through the works of the Virginia School economists. These features separate the Virginia School from mainstream economics and from the Chicago School with which it is often identified. We begin by specifying the orthodoxy in order to sketch how Buchanan and his colleagues departed from it"--