“The State Samaritan”

Abstract: How can welfare be provided in a way that does not encourage dependency? This question motivated the economist James Buchanan to formalize the problem as the “Samaritan’s dilemma”. To resolve this dilemma, the Samaritan needs to acknowledge the dilemma, construct rules that constrain their help to the recipient’s effort, and utilize third party enforcement. While it is often assumed that the government should serve as the third-party enforcement, previous literature has demonstrated that private organizations can also fulfill that role. This paper analyzes how the identity of the third-party agent—whether the government or a private organization—affects the implications of the Samaritan’s dilemma.  I use comparative institutional analysis to look at the outcomes of the dilemma and its solution in both contexts.

“Buchanan and Sen on Liberty” (with Alain Marciano)

Abstract: Much debate over how to create a free society turns on the question of what kind of freedom should be pursued. Two broad approaches can be distinguished. “Political liberals” view liberty as the freedom to make genuine choices, emphasizing the design of institutions that secure such opportunities. “Philosophical liberals,” by contrast, treat freedom as an outcome, evaluating institutions by the results they produce rather than the processes they embody. This paper will explore this distinction by taking the views of two economists who seem to disagree: Buchanan, on the one hand, as a political liberal, and Sen, on the other, as a philosophical liberal. The core of our analysis will consist in a discussion of Sen’s impossibility claim to be a liberal and a Paretian—which can be viewed as a defense of philosophical liberalism—and Buchanan’s answer—which is typically a criticism of Sen from the perspective of a political liberal. We would like to show that there were indeed differences between these two economists: Sen did emphasize the problem that would face someone trying to defend Pareto optimality, and liberalism; for his part, Buchanan replied that the problem would disappear for a political liberal who would focus on institutions. However, and this is what we will argue, the two authors can be reconciled if one admits that there exists an institutional dimension in Sen’s defense of liberty and if one admits that Buchanan did not defend any kind of outcome as a pure political liberal might.