Money and Markets: Essays in Honor of Leland B. Yeager

3 The Virginia renaissance inpolitical economyThe 1960s revisited *James M. BuchananIntroductionFrom a perspective of the early twenty-first century, the faculty roster of theJames Wilson Department of Economics at the University of Virginia in the early1960s merits attention on several counts. 1 But the “powers that were” at Mr.Jefferson’s university did not value that particular faculty highly. Recall that thosewere years heavily laden with ideological baggage, and that faculty was clearlynonconventional. The university, in its wisdom, allowed the 1960s program in“Virginia Political Economy,” despite its external success, to return to orthodoxy asWhinston, Coase, Tullock, Buchanan departed permanently, and Nutter left for anextended period. 2 The negative aspects of the Virginia story have been recounted,at least in part, and I shall not elaborate on these aspects here. 3My aim in this paper is more positive; I shall discuss the origins, the construction,and the operation of the Virginia program, rather than its deliberate destruction bythe university administration. I should add the disclaimer that my discussion isbased on my own remembered history rather than on a documented record.From idea to actualityWarren Nutter and I were fellow graduate students at the University of Chicago inthe years immediately following World War II. I recall a conversation in early 1948during which we expressed our shared conviction that our discipline, economics,seemed to be drifting away from its moorings in classical political economy. Wequite explicitly discussed the need for an institutional–organizational initiative thatmight serve to bring the classical foundations back to center stage. Like manyconversations, that one was filed away, especially since we were relatively immaturegraduate students with no academic standing.The Virginia program, however, had its origins in that particular conversation.In 1956, both Warren Nutter and I were appointed to faculty positions at theUniversity of Virginia, and I was appointed Chairman of the James WilsonDepartment of Economics. Both of us had completed our apprenticeship, so tospeak. I had fulfilled my obligation to return to southern academia with stints atboth the University of Tennessee and Florida State University. Nutter had put insome token years at Yale University. Both of us had published in professional