Geoff Brennan and Public Policy

Geoffrey Brennan made a contribution to public policy that was broad, reflecting his own inter-disciplinary research interests – from conventional tax and public finance issues, through to constitutional political economy and institutional design. This contribution was tempered by Brennan’s own reluctance to offer direct policy recommendations, partly a function of natural epistemic humility and also his views on the appropriate role of the economist in public debate – views shaped by his association with the Virginia school of Constitutional Political Economy. Brennan’s research interests evolved to include some contrarian insights on public finance issues, a major contribution to public choice theory, early development of the idea of expressive motives in voting behaviour, and the ‘economy of esteem’ as a motivator of human action. Despite this breadth, throughout his intellectual career, Brennan remained within the broad ‘methodological coherence’ of Virginia political economy – methodological individualism, the centrality of exchange, the Pareto criterion for welfare analysis and a predominant focus on the ‘rules of the game’.