Buchanan, David

Born 1779; died 1848. British journalist and economist. Follower of A. Smith.

In 1814, Buchanan published Smith’s work An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in three volumes, along with his own notes. In a supplementary fourth volume he included his commentaries and other materials. Buchanan’s principal work, An Inquiry Into the Taxation and Commercial Policy of Great Britain, represents a further development of Smith’s views on problems of monetary circulation, exchange value, and the influence of supply and demand on the level of prices. Great attention was paid by Buchanan to explicating the sources and the essence of land rent, on which issue he was “a zealous opponent of the physiocrats” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 26, part 1, p. 20).