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2022-06-12 14:55:28

Coordination ProblemAboutRecent PostsMcCloskey on Liberalism and Treating Others as AdultsHayek Program Podcast — Rosolino CandelaPandemic ProductivityHappy Holidays 2021 from the FA Hayek Program at MercatusVisions of the Future of Capitalism5 Tool "Players" and the Future is in the Creativity and Energy of the Next Generation of ScholarsContestation, Deliberation, Discussion and Cooperation -- #Ostrom Day 2021After, After War"What a science does, or should do, is simply to allow the average man, through professional specialization, to command the heights of genius." James M. Buchanan"At the end of the day I think I am a teacher" -- Steve Horwitz (1964-2021)ArchivesJune 2022April 2022December 2021October 2021September 2021August 2021June 2021May 2021February 2021January 2021June 2022 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Blogs We LikeBeyond the Numbers (American Institute for Economic Research)Bleeding Heart LibertariansBob McTeer's BlogCafé HayekCatallaxyDivision of LabourKids Prefer CheeseKnowledge ProblemLiberty and PowerMarginal RevolutionOrganizations and MarketsPeter Gordon's BlogPrivate Sector Development BlogThe Cobden CentreThe Economic Way of ThinkingThe Filter^ThinkMarketsTruth on the MarketLinksAfrica House at NYUAssociation of Private Enterprise EducationCenter for Study of Public ChoiceCritical ReviewE. G. West CentreEcole Autrichienne En LigneEcon Journal WatchEconomists' VoiceEconTalkEnterprise Africa!Foundation for Economic EducationGeorge Mason University Economics DepartmentHoover InstitutionInstitute for Humane StudiesInterdisciplinary Center for Economic ScienceJames Buchanan Center for Political EconomyJohn Templeton FoundationL'Institut TurgotLiberty Fund, Inc.Library of Economics and LibertyMercatus CenterMilton and Rose Friedman FoundationQuarterly Journal of Austrian EconomicsReview of Austrian EconomicsSociety for the Development of Austrian EconomicsSouthern Economic AssociationUniversidad Francisco Marroquin Blog powered by Typepad Subscribe to this blog's feed McCloskey on Liberalism and Treating Others as Adults|Peter Boettke|Deirdre McCloskey has a new paper circulating which works through a theme she has been stressing a lot lately.  As a social philosophy that begins with the recognition that we are one another’s dignified equals, liberalism demands that we treat each other as adults, not as children.  Yes, we are fallible creatures, but also capable and responsible individuals.  In her latest working paper she reminded me of this great quote from Adam Smith.Read Smith in the context of Biden’s Build Back Better and the Great Reset; or Elizabeth Warren and the indictment of corporate greed and the attack on wealth; or the traditionalist conservatives who would like to be in power who denigrate consumer preferences and the liberal market order.  Who do these people think they are?  And then remember their blatant hypocrisy in terms of their own wealth and private behavior let alone their use of public funds.  Wealth creation is a good thing for society, economic freedom is wealth creating.  The energy comes from individuals striving to better their and their families situation.  As Smith says these public officials can look in mirror first and check their own behavior and “they may safely trust private people with theirs.” Posted by Peter Boettke on June 11, 2022 at 01:37 PM | Permalink| Comments (0) | Hayek Program Podcast — Rosolino Candela|Peter Boettke|Last week my second of 2 podcasts with Rosolino Candela on the art and science of economics was released.Listen to part 1 as well.  Posted by Peter Boettke on April 10, 2022 at 08:57 PM | Permalink| Comments (0) | Pandemic Productivity|Peter Boettke|Nicholas Bloom, on a recent episode of Hidden Brain discusses the issue of workplace productivity during the pandemic. It turns out that enterprises saved on rent and other expenses, and worker productivity actually increased 13% by staying at home.  Of course, this assumes that at home work conditions are satisfactory -- dedicated space, child care/elder care needs met, stable and high powered internet connection, and state of the art equipment sufficient for the tasks at hand.  Of course, there are distraction at home -- the big three it turns out are bed, TV and refrigerator. But there are distractions at work as well.Academics have been debating this issue since Spring of 2020, as we pivoted to stay-at-home teaching and research. And it impacts individual teachers and researchers differs depending on their at home situation, and what their fields of research are, and what their teaching specialty is.  These past 2 academic years have presented challenges even to us in the privileged class, and we all should think long and hard about the impact it has had on those of us less fortunate in their circumstances and occupations.  It will take years of serious study to do a full accounting, and the sad reality is as I write this it ain't close to over yet.Spring 2022 promises more stay-at-home experiences at many colleges and universities as the omicron variant of Covid sweeps across the globe.  Zoom webinars substitute for in-person presentations, as conference organization and travel plans are thrown up into the air again.  But let me go back to Bloom's measured claim -- 13% increase in productivity.A few months before the pandemic hit, I posted about the amazing people I work with and their scholarly productivity for the decade between 2010 and 2020. This didn't list journal articles, or journals edited, or book series initiated and edited, or graduate student teaching, mentoring and placement, or a host of other things that actually makes possible productivity in an academic research center.  Novelty and creativity in ideas is of course the top priority, but academic productivity can be measured in volume of output, placement of output, citation impact of output, and internal and external funding of research projects, as well as professional awards and honors.During the period between January 2020 and January 1, 2022, our team at the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, along with the more general team at Academic & Student Programs at the Mercatus Center had to pivot like the rest of academia to online programming and stay-at-home research.  At GMU, we only really returned to in-person teaching in the Fall of 2021, and even then the conditions were such that many remained online. Our research workshop stayed online throughout the term, and we are planning to remain online to start the Spring 2022 term.  Many of our educational programs have been on hold since March 2020, but our team found creative ways to engage those signed up to participate and we created a new Don Lavoie FellowshipWe also continued to engage our Smith, Morgenstern, Bastiat, Schumpeter and Mercatus MA and PhD Fellowship program participants and alumni in a variety a ways with research groups, and a return to some in-person programming.During the past 2 years, besides teaching my courses and mentoring graduate students, I was able to publish 4 books -- Four Pillars, The Essential Austrian School (with Chris Coyne), Money and the Rule of Law (with Alex Salter and Dan Smith) and The Struggle for a Better World, as well as editing 3 volumes, including The Soul of Classical Political Economy: James Buchanan from the Archives (with Alain Marciano).  I was also able to publish or have accepted for publication during these years 15+ papers in a variety of professional journals.  Both my sense of urgency and joy of learning has only increased during these past 2 academic years. My appreciation of what I learned from my teachers such as Kenneth Boulding, James Buchanan, and Don Lavoie has increased immensely during this experience.  PLEASE READ AND STUDY THEIR WORK, I think you will be inspired as well.I was far from alone in continuing to publish during the pandemic years.  Richard Wagner, for example, published his Macroeconomics as Systems Theory; Chris Coyne published Manufacturing Militarism (with Abigail Hall); Larry White continued work on his book tentatively titled Better Money.  Of course, Wagner, Coyne and White also published multiple articles in journals and posts at sites such as Alt-M (for White).  Faculty fellows of the Hayek Program such as Mark Koyama wrote a new book, How the World Grew Rich (with Jared Rubin) as well as had his work on the Black Death accepted at Journal of Economic Literature and Peter Leeson had papers published or accepted for publication in a multitude of journals ranging from Current Anthropology to the Economic Journal.  Virgil Storr published Cultural Considerations in Austrian Economics (with Arielle John), as well as edited 3 other volumes (2 with Stefanie Haeffele, and 1 with Stefanie and Solomon Stein).  He also published 15 journal articles and/or chapters in books during this period. And Don Boudreaux continues to educate the general public on the economic way of thinking with his columns. letters and lectures -- many of which can be found linked to at Cafe Hayek. Special mention should be made of Boudreaux's wonderful volume in the Fraser Essential Scholars Series on James Buchanan (with Randy Holcombe), and the video educational resources that are related to that volume. Scholars, educators, and public intellectuals make up our faculty, and I consider myself most fortunate to work with them.  Also, in 2021 one of the core faculty members that made our program at GMU even a possibility due to her pivotal role as founding member of the Center for the Study of Market Processes and chair of the Department of Economics at GMU, Distinguished Senior Fellow Emerita Karen Vaughn, published a collection of her papers in economics and political economy, Essays on Austrian Economics and Political Economy.  As the great Israel Kirzner put it in summarizing Vaughn's volume: “The qualities which shine throughout this superb collection of Karen Vaughn’s scholarly papers –vibrant, irrepressible intellectual curiosity, and incorruptible intellectual integrity—are the very qualities which have made their author the deeply respected senior scholar that she is.”  Pick up her book and enjoy the intellectual adventure she will take you on.The productivity of our Senior Fellows in the Hayek Program such as Roberta Herzberg, Ginny Choi, Jayme Lemke, Kristen Collins, Arielle John, Stefanie Haeffele, Solomon Stein, Jordan Lofthouse, Paul Aligica, and Rosolino Candela are just as impressive -- with papers published in journals such as AJPS, PLoS One, JoIE, and EJLE, as well as multiple published books, public engagement in traditional as well as modern media such as posts at EconLib as well as other internet sites, videos, and podcasts.  Dedicated teachers, scholars, and public intellectuals work here. And, we have an amazing support team that enables us to actually pursue our research and educational endeavors, let alone achieve the productive output we do as a team.The problem with any sort of accounting like this is that (a) pivotal people to the endeavor will be inadvertently left out, and (b) some of the critical research and educational output will fail to get the mention it deserves. For example, Erwin Dekker is a new member of our research team, but in 2021 alone he published his wonderful biography Jan Tinbergen as well as an edited volume on Governing Markets as Knowledge Commons, both with Cambridge University Press.  Erwin also in 2021 won the ESHET Outstanding Young Scholar Award in the field of history of economic thought.Our Senior Fellows are editors of Review of Austrian Economics, Public Choice and The Independent Review.  I also just recently was named an editor of Journal of Contextual Economics [one of the oldest journals in the social sciences]. We are also Associate Editors of numerous journals such as Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization and on the editorial board of even more numerous journals in the social sciences. And, we edited book series at Cambridge, Routledge, Palgrave, Lexington and at Mercatus.I invite you to visit the personal websites of each of our scholars, as well as our affiliated scholars, such as recent addition to that list -- Catherine Herfeld, who recently won the Karl-Heinz Hoffmann Prize 2021 for her scholarship in the history and philosophy of economics. Look them up on Google Scholar as well. As I said in that post to begin 2020, I work with great people here at the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.  Hayek once remarked that in order to push the field forward we need to excite the imaginations of scholars and intellectuals, and to pursue ideas wherever they may lead, to not be so concerned with current affairs, and certainly to never spare "the susceptibilities of the mighty", including the high priests of the economics profession.  You can get a sense of some of the research members of our team are working on through the Hayek Program Podcasts.One of our adopted mottos at Mercatus is "Economics With Attitude", it is my hope that we will continually reflect that spirit in our words and our deeds as we emerge from the pandemic in the next year.  I think the response of our team during these tumultuous times since March 2020 suggests we do everything with the can do spirit that is required.  As James Buchanan was fond of saying -- onwards and upwards.Fellowship applications for 2022-2023 are coming due over the next few months. Take advantage of these opportunities, come study with us, and join us in our ongoing quest to learn about the human condition and how best to understand humanity in a great diversity of institutional environments and social relationships.  Join us and explore technical economics, comparative institutional analysis, and the moral and social philosophical questions that are raised whenever we contemplate the appropriate scale and scope of governmental authority and the principles of a self-governing democratic society.  In other words, join us in practicing Economics with Attitude.  Posted by Peter Boettke on December 31, 2021 at 12:05 AM | Permalink| Comments (0) | Happy Holidays 2021 from the FA Hayek Program at Mercatus Posted by Peter Boettke on December 25, 2021 at 10:17 AM | Permalink| Comments (0) | Visions of the Future of Capitalism|Peter Boettke|Earlier this year I published my book, The Struggle for a Better World which consists of various published versions of public lectures I have given over roughly between 2000-2020 mainly at learned societies and associations.  They have also reflect a little bit of my globetrotting during that period as the site of lectures have ranged from New Zealand to East and Central Europe. These various lectures represent my attempt to come to grips not only with the trials and tribulations of post-communist transformation and economic development more generally that occupied my scholarly attention from the mid-1980s to 2000s, but my reaction to a changing world of ideas and world of practical affairs in the wake of 9/11 and the Global Financial Crisis of 2008.  I wrote a new introduction and new conclusion to address the changing situation as I see it since the Covid 19 pandemic of 2020, and the increasing awareness of militarization of police and injustice in our society.  My podcast with Marian Tupy from last May will give you a good sense of what I am up to in the book.  Those lectures are my sincere attempt to understand the human condition using the tools of economic reasoning to aid me in that scholarly task, but also as a citizen to try to contemplate on the basis of that effort to understand how we may in fact engage in the project of how to repair this broken world.  It is, as I explain, a struggle in both the scholarly and the citizen within a democratic society sense.  It is a joyous struggle, I might add, but it doesn't get any easier.  Scholarship and science exist at the edge of error and we do best when we remember that, and commit ourselves to life-long learning.Ilia Murtazashvili has provided, in my humble opinion, an excellent comparative review of my perspective with that of the rather brilliant Daniel Bromley. Bromley is in the same intellectual tradition as the wonderful Warren Samuels, and also deeply familiar with the works of the Ostroms.  Like Warren, he is more comfortable with the older institutionalism of the Wisconsin School than with the New Institutionalism of Douglass North and Oliver Williamson.  See Malcolm Rutherford's classic text Institutions in Economics for a good accounting of the different perspectives. As Ilia writes: In this review essay, I compare and contrast Peter Boettke’s The Struggle for a Better World (Mercatus Center, 2021) and Daniel Bromley’s Possessive Individualism: A Crisis of Capitalism (Oxford University Press, 2019). Each of these books considers the future of capitalism. Boettke’s Struggle sees capitalism as the only morally and economically justifiable system but that continual effort is necessary to ensure the capitalist enterprise succeeds. Bromley’s Crisis sees capitalism as a spent force that no longer does what it was meant to do—namely, improve the economic well-being of households. There are surprisingly many points of agreement in these books, most notably a concern for the downtrodden in society and an appreciation for the legitimation crisis confronting capitalism. There are also important differences that will give anyone interested in the future of capitalism much to ponder. Boettke sees unconstrained government as the primary threat to legitimacy; Bromley identifies the possessive individualism that lies at the heart of our current capitalist system as the source of the crisis. Both books make a significant contribution to our understanding of the institutions governing capitalist economies and powerful arguments as we contemplate the future of capitalism.I am very grateful to Ilia for writing such a thoughtful essay, and it will give me a lot to chew on especially as I am working my way through the most recent book of another scholar that exists in the Warren Samuels, Dan Bromley, Malcolm Rutherford intellectual space, Geoffrey Hodgson and his new book Liberal Solidarity.  I hope Ilia's essay inspires others, especially graduate students in the social and policy sciences as well as the humanities, to join with us in this struggle to understand the human condition, and to contemplate what it might take to repair this broken world of ours. We need to have honest, frank and open conversations.  Murtazashvili provides us with a model of how to do that. Posted by Peter Boettke on October 02, 2021 at 11:13 AM | Permalink| Comments (3) | 5 Tool "Players" and the Future is in the Creativity and Energy of the Next Generation of Scholars|Peter Boettke|I recently did this podcast with the Austrian Economics Institut in Vienna.  I would like to draw attention to my discussion of the pivotal role that a 5 tool player (in this instance I highlight Ben Powell, see min 55) and to my appeal to the creative and curious among the younger generation to accept the invitation to inquiry that is is Austrian economics and developed along their own lines (see min 59:30).I hope you find the discussion worth listening.  My colleague Larry White does the podcast the following week on the future of Money.  Posted by Peter Boettke on October 01, 2021 at 11:00 AM | Permalink| Comments (1) | Contestation, Deliberation, Discussion and Cooperation -- #Ostrom Day 2021|Peter Boettke|This week the Institut Ostrom Catalunya hosted an online conference to honor Lin Ostrom and the Bloomington School, in which I participated in a dialogue with Deirdre McCloskey. I greatly enjoy these opportunities to discuss ideas and explore the foundations of social science and a democratic self-governing society.  Posted by Peter Boettke on September 28, 2021 at 11:49 AM | Permalink| Comments (0) | After, After War|Peter Boettke|As US military planes left the airport in Afghanistan, the longest war in US history came to an end.  Now begins the hard recognition of the true costs of the last 20 years. Sadness of this episode in US history was accented last Sunday as the remains of 13 soldiers returned to Dover Air Force base in Delaware.  The Costs of War Project at Brown has been detailing as best they can the true costs of these efforts post-9/11.  As they summarize in their report: Over 801,000 people have died in the post-9/11 wars due to direct war violence, and several times as many due to the reverberating effects of war Over 335,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the fighting 38 million — the number of war refugees and displaced persons The US federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is over $6.4 trillion The US government is conducting counterterror activities in 85 countries The wars have been accompanied by violations of human rights and civil liberties, in the US and abroadChris Coyne began working in the field of defense and peace economics in the early 2000s, and in particular examining US military led efforts to nation build in conflict ridden countries and regions in late 19th and throughout the 20th century. The track record is dismal.  His political economy framework is critical for understanding and contextualizing each of these outcomes reported above (and more), as well as the horrendous historical record. These efforts are expensive in terms of lives, in terms of $$$, and in terms of deterioration of the foundational institutions of freedom and responsibility.  War is indeed the health of the state, and its perpetuation undermines the liberal plan for liberty, equality and justice.Readers must also see Coyne's Doing Bad By Doing Good and Tyranny Comes Home (with Abigail Hall) to understanding how that political economy framework enables us to get a better grasp the reverberating effects of this 20 years of war and failed effort to bring true humanitarian relief to those who suffered so much. As Frederic Douglass once argued -- injustice and hypocrisy should make wise men mad. Douglass was talking about the persistence of slavery in a land that declared universal human rights.  Coyne is discussing war and military occupations in the name of liberal democracy and free market capitalism.  But precisely because we can learn from a wise man like Coyne, we can turn our madness and anger in a genuine direction rather than merely the gratuitous one we see play out in the media and mediated through partisan politics.  Politics produces nonsense, political economy eschews the nonsense and disciplines our thinking and focuses our analysis on what is wrong, why it is wrong, and what we must do to stop the madness.Read Coyne, listen to Coyne, learn from Coyne and lets never repeat these egregious errors of the last 20 years ever again. Posted by Peter Boettke on August 31, 2021 at 01:10 PM | Permalink| Comments (0) | "What a science does, or should do, is simply to allow the average man, through professional specialization, to command the heights of genius." James M. Buchanan|Peter Boettke|This description of the power of economics by Buchanan has always struck me as insightful.  Economics is a tool for the curious.  Properly understood, economics is not a tool for the power seeking and those who want to govern over others, though that is what the transformation of "economic science" turned the discipline into with a false view of science and an inappropriate understanding of democratic governance in the unholy alliance of statism and scientism that was the progressive era that still haunts our discipline to this day.As a tool for the curious, economic properly understood enables us to make sense of the senseless.  One can distinguish between the "natural economist" and the "properly trained economist".  Just as in athletic endeavors, it is very helpful to be both a natural economist and a properly trained economist -- hard work beats talent, when talent fails to work hard and all of that.  At GMU, I have had the good fortune to work with some amazingly talented properly trained economists over the years: Ed Stringham, Virgil Storr, Ben Powell, Scott Beaulier, Pete Leeson, and Chris Coyne to name a few that have proven their talents now over a 20 year period of active teaching, scholarly and academic entrepreneurship.  And, this list could continue to include names that would quadruple that total if I included younger scholars who received their PhDs after 2010 or even after 2020.  Natural economists who have been properly trained, and thus specialize in making sense of the senseless.Economics as a tool for the curious yield social understanding, not social control. And, it in fact demonstrates why efforts at social control so often result in sad and tragic outcomes.  Let me point just to the work of two of the scholars I mention above.  I am particular drawn to use them to illustrate because next week we will have our PhD orientation for our PhD fellowship students and it will be the 20th anniversary of the date when Pete Leeson and Chris Coyne sat in those seats.  Pete's work has specialized in making sense of the senseless in human history -- from Pirates, to Ordeals, to  Witch Trials. And all find stunning parallels in our modern world of governmental practice.  Law, politics and society all are examined in Leeson's work through the lens of a "natural economist" -- the result is a deeper understanding of the human condition.I was prompted to write this entry not only because of the 20th anniversary, but because of the images we have been confronted with about events in Afghanistan and our daily information overload about Covid, the CDC and the FDA.  All these events are senseless in a fundamental way, and we cannot help but think WHY, or as Leeson might put it WTF?!  So to our rescue, let me point to the natural economist who is properly trained -- in this instance, Chris Coyne.  In After War, Coyne details the deplorable record of US led military efforts at "nation building", and makes sense of that record with an examination of the systemic incentives and knowledge problems that the task at hand must wrestle with.  In Doing Bad By Doing Good, Coyne further explores in systematic way the difficulties bureaucracies face in tackling even well defined tasks, let alone complex tasks with ambiguous and amorphous goals.Government messaging and signaling that invokes fear rather than rational calculation of trade-offs; bureaucratic bottle-necks that cause delays and missed opportunities; the tragic inability of even humanitarian efforts to be successful, let alone the utter dismay at the failed effort at nation building that resulted not in freedom and prosperity but instead in an expensive collapse into a new era of tyranny and oppression, are explained in efficient and effective prose in the works of Leeson and Coyne.So if GMU -- Masonomics -- has done anything consistently over its history -- from the early 1980s when its PhD program was formed to the most recent graduating class, it has tried to be a place that cultivates the talents of the natural economist through proper training so they they as ordinary individuals with the aid of economic science can too rise to the heights of an observational genius. And in so doing, make sense of the senseless that we see everyday out our windows, on our computers and TV screens, or read in the news or on our cellphones with Twitter and other social media.  The animal trials Leeson talks about have nothing on us with the bizarre and strange patterns of human behavior we can see not in exotic lands from afar, but right downtown in Washington, DC in the halls of congress, the pentagon, and the White House, and in state houses of government across the land.  Just remember scarcity and trade-offs; choices and constraints; systematic incentives and knowledge problems; and think through these consistently and persistently in understanding human behavior in all walks of life be it commerce, politics, law, religion, etc.  Posted by Peter Boettke on August 20, 2021 at 10:37 AM | Permalink| Comments (0) | "At the end of the day I think I am a teacher" -- Steve Horwitz (1964-2021)|Peter Boettke|My dear friend, co-author, partner in so many educational and scholarly efforts since the mid 1980s passed away early Sunday morning (June 27, 2021) after a long and courageous battle with an aggressive form of cancer that to be honest with you I never heard of before he told me he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma.  Steve was an optimist to the end, and he fought his disease with courage and curiosity (yes, he was fascinated by the science) that was awe-inspiring.  Obviously my heart is broken for the loss of my friend, but my deepest sympathy are for Sarah and the entire family.  A husband, a father, a brother, a son was taken from them way too soon.  Life is full of chapters, Steve had many chapters yet to be written in his personal life as well as his professional life.Cancer took our beloved professor Don Lavoie 20 years ago this fall, and cancer has impacted my own family and now taken my dear friend. Cancer is a horrible disease that takes too many from us too early.  Science has made much progress in treatment in my lifetime, but there is so much more that must be done.  Steve understood the intimate connection between science and progress, and a large part of his teaching and public intellectual work was in communicating to others how entrepreneurship and technological innovation resulting not only in producing more with less, but producing new and fascinating products and services that immensely improved the human condition.  For his work, Steve was justly awarded the Julian Simon Memorial Award in 2020.  We had jointly met the great Julian Simon in 1994, and had a memorable day with him and especially a boat ride discussing ideas (Steve, Dave Prychitko and myself).  Julian, himself, was charming, optimistic, and a razor sharp mind -- Steve was a lot like him.  I know among Steve's many richly deserved awards for teaching and scholarship through his career, he very much cherished the Simon Award, as he should.  Here is an interview with Steve, as well as his award lecture, from September 30, 2020. My title comes from the interview as Steve is asked to describe himself.  When asked, I describe myself this way as well.  We didn't coordinate on that answer.  But Steve I think captures the reason why we both settled on that answer in a description of our teacher to Nathan Goodman (a freshly minded PhD from GMU, now moving on to NYU where he will join Mario Rizzo and David Harper), when Nathan was starting his serious study of economics and the work of Don Lavoie. "I am so very much a product of Don -- his ideas, his commitment to the classroom, his temperament, and his interest in reaching out to the left -- that I cannot be objective about him and his work."  Don was a teacher, he taught us to be teachers. It was not a derogatory term in our universe, never was.  Lavoie students are teacher/scholars.  In fact, we were taught we had a moral obligation to be dedicated and effective teachers.  Steve exemplified that. Always curious, always learning, always perfecting his craft.  Steve says of Don to Nathan, "not a week goes by in which something doesn't make me miss him." This now will be said of him by his numerous 'students', including me.Yesterday as I was processing the news, despite my gnawing skepticism born of living a professional life within secular institutions, I was thinking wouldn't it be wonderful if Steve and Don were once again united in deep and meaningful conversation about methodology of the social sciences, the development of market process analysis, the central role of money in the operation of the market economy and more generally a free society, and the outer boundaries of the liberal society.  In my picture, Mises and Hayek, as well as Marx, Veblen and Keynes would be there with them. And the free and uncoerced discourse would roam widely and the mutual understanding of minds would emerge.  Of course, the Mises, Hayek, Lavoie and Horwitz perspective would more or less emerge as the consensus position of this free discourse.  But in my picture, after that conversation Steve would effortlessly and enthusiastically discuss with Neil Peart fine points of music and learn where the best concerts were at, and I don't know who he would find this out from but he would find the best places to eat as well.  Steve loved life, he loved his family, he loved his job, he loved the community of friends and life long learners he cultivated over the past decade on social media.  And, as Dave Prychitko put it, he loved laughter and celebrating humorous in the human experience.  And, those of us who knew him loved him deeply for all of this.I will write more about Steve in the days to come, but for now, watch this interview  and listen to his lecture.  He truly was not just a teacher, but a GREAT teacher.    Posted by Peter Boettke on June 28, 2021 at 12:10 PM | Permalink| Comments (0) | The Market as a Social Space, and What Happens When The Firms that Occupy That Space Disappear Due to Economic Disruption|Peter Boettke|Virgil Storr is one of the most perceptive and intellectually challenging social scientists I know.  He also writes with grace and eloquence, but leave that aside at the moment.  He has pushed an argument for many years now that not only is the atomistic model of competition wrong headed, the more general "model" of cooperation in anonymity is mistaken.  Markets are spaces in which relationships are formed and sustained.  His argument makes one think, his argument makes one take notice, and his argument invites inquiry.  For much of my academic life, I have been attracted to the cooperation in anonymity idea and the proposition of commerce enabling us to benefit from the company of strangers.  Consider Adam Smith's discussion of the common woolen coat that ends up on the back of the day laborer.Observe the accommodation of the most common artificer or day-labourereven the day-labourer’s coat being the produce of a vast number of workmen. in a civilized and thriving country, and you will perceive that the number of people of whose industry a part, though but a small part, has been employed in procuring him this accommodation, exceeds all computation. The woollen coat, for example, which covers the day-labourer, as coarse and rough as it may appear, is the produce of the joint labour of a great multitude of workmen. The shepherd, the sorter of the wool, the wool-comber or carder, the dyer, the scribbler, the spinner, the weaver, the fuller, the dresser, with many others, must all join their different arts in order to complete even this homely production. How many merchants and carriers, besides, must have been employed in transporting the materials from some of those workmen to others who often live in a very distant part of the country! how much commerce and navigation in particular, how many ship-builders, sailors, sail-makers, rope-makers, must have been employed in order to bring together the different drugs made use of by the dyer, which often come from the remotest corners of the world! What a variety of labour too is necessary in order to produce the tools of the meanest of those workmen! To say nothing of such complicated machines as the ship of the sailor, the mill of the fuller, or even the loom of the weaver, let us consider only what a variety of labour is requisite in order to form that very simple machine, the shears with which the shepherd clips the wool. The miner, the builder of the furnace for smelting the ore, the feller of the timber, the burner of the charcoal to be made use of in the smelting-house, the brick-maker, the brick-layer, the workmen who attend the furnace, the mill-wright, the forger, the smith, must all of them join their different arts in order to produce them. Were we to examine, in the same manner, all the different parts of his dress and household furniture, the coarse linen shirt which he wears next his skin, the shoes which cover his feet, the bed which he lies on, and all the different parts which compose it, the kitchen-grate at which he prepares his victuals, the coals which he makes use of for that purpose, dug from the bowels of the earth, and brought to him perhaps by a long sea and a long land carriage, all the other utensils of his kitchen, all the furniture of his table, the knives and forks, the earthen or pewter plates upon which he serves up and divides his victuals, the different hands employed in preparing his bread and his beer, the glass window which lets in the heat and the light, and keeps out the wind and the rain, with all the knowledge and art requisite for preparing that beautiful and happy invention, without which these northern parts of the world could scarce have afforded a very comfortable habitation, together with the tools of all the different workmen employed in producing those different conveniencies; if we examine, I say, all these things, and consider what a variety of labour is employed about each of them, we shall be sensible that without the assistance and co-operation of many thousands, the very meanest person in a civilized country could not be provided, even according to, what we very falsely imagine, the easy and simple manner in which he is commonly accommodated.Leonard Read's "I, Pencil" was little more than a mid-20th century restatement of this Smithian point about the division of labor, division of knowledge, and complexity of the exchange relationships in anonymity. None of us knows how to make a common woolen coat, just as none of us possess the knowledge, skill, and aptitudes to make a #2 pencil from scratch.  Our ability to enjoy the comfort of the coat, and the utility of the pencil, we rely on productive specialization and mutually beneficial exchange with a vast network of individuals that far exceeds our computation and our ability to know as persons and people that we have deep ties to.  Smith a few pages later, hits this point home in the passages that set up his famous butcher, brewer and baker quote:In civilized society he stands at all times in need of the co-operation and assistance of great multitudes, while his whole life is scarce sufficient to gain the friendship of a few persons. In almost every other race of animals each individual, when it is grown up to maturity, is entirely independent, and in its natural state has occasion for the assistance of no other living creature. But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and shew them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this: Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.But when we think about each node in the network of the exchange relationships that form the system, the anonymity aspects seems to move into the background or perhaps even disappear altogether.  We share stories, we smile, we express regret, and most importantly we talk.  Our commercial lives are filled with conversations, and in many instances deeply meaningful conversations.  Markets are arenas for social activity, and not only economic relationships are forged in that arena but often deep non-economic relationships are formed and sustained.I think Smith (and Hayek) and Storr are both right.  In fact, I think Storr gives us a clearer window into the doux commerce thesis of Smith and others, than one gets from Smith interpreted through the lens of neoclassical economics and perhaps even a clearer picture that one gets from Smith as interpreted by Boettke (perhaps I say because I am stuck in my ways). Storr's Smith is a better version of Smith than say Arrow's Smith and the invisible hand theorem of general competitive equilibrium.  But this isn't just a conceptual issue, it is an empirical issue of understanding what markets and commerce do in communities, and what happens when the world changes and firms and markets that once were vibrant now disappear. This was the topic of a discussion this morning on NPR's Marketplace Morning Edition focused on Thrift Town. Hint: it isn't just the wide variety of products at discounted prices that could be found at the store that is now missed, as it failed to survive the economic disruptions of the last year and a half.Teams of researchers would do well to be in the field engaged in ethnographic study of the impact on communities when commercial spaces and work disappears due to economic disruptions, we will learn a lot if we are willing to take notice, ask the right questions, and LISTEN. Posted by Peter Boettke on June 09, 2021 at 03:15 PM | Permalink| Comments (0) | I believe we have two lives ... the life we learn with, and the life we live with after that|Peter Boettke|I am a sucker for sports films, well basically anything sports.  This is one of my favorite scenes from The Natural. Last week -- Thursday May 20th 2021 -- I was inducted into my HS Hall of Fame. I was inducted under the heading of "accomplished professional", but in her introduction, Principal Feeley discussed my books, my teaching, and my coaching, as well as the institutions that I have attended and worked at, and the places I have been and awards I have won over the years.Back in the fall of 1977, when they take your yearbook photo they asked us to write down something that was supposed to capture ourselves and our time at ALJ and our hopes for the future.  In mine, I mention basketball, I mention Rosemary, and I quoted this passage -- Live as if you will die tomorrow, Learn as if you will live forever.  My HS basketball coach gave us quotes to think about as we pursued our hoop dreams, and this one stuck with me.Anyway, here were my remarks accepting my induction. Thank you Principal Feeley for that kind introduction and to Billy Bell for nominating me, and for the Hall of Fame Committee for selecting me.  I also want to congratulate the other inductees tonight, and congratulate the scholarship award winners from the senior class of ALJ.I only wish my parents were still alive to be here with me tonight.  They would have been both thrilled and surprised. Thrilled because they devoted their lives to building a loving and nurturing home for my brother Fred, sister Sue and myself here in Clark, NJ. And, it was that and Clark was a wonderful town to grow up in.  Surprised because to be honest, I was a mediocre student and mediocre athlete in HS. BUT, I had extraordinary teachers and classmates that taught me how to learn, and I had extraordinary coaches and teammates that taught me how to compete.  Life long learning and competing everyday to be better than you were yesterday have been two guiding principles ever since.  Wherever my journey has taken me over the subsequent decades, I never forget that it began here in Clark, NJ and at Arthur L Johnson HS.If I may I would like to acknowledge two other special people that are here with me tonight. First, my big brother Fred, thank you for being the best big brother anyone could ask for and teaching me so much, and being a role model for me as I was growing up and even as a adult in how to be a solid family man and husband and father.  And, to Rosemary, my wife.  Rosemary and I met after my junior year at ALJ and we have been together ever since. We went to college together, we got married 2 weeks after we graduated, and we have been on this journey together.  She is my best friend, my life partner and the love of my life.  I could not have accomplished any of whatever I have without her belief in me, support of all my endeavors, and her love.  Thank you so much for everything.Once again, thank you Principal Feeley and the Hall of Fame Committee for this great honor, and Congratulations to all the other award winners tonight.   Posted by Peter Boettke on May 23, 2021 at 01:33 PM | Permalink| Comments (0) | Generality and Predictability in Monetary Theory and Policy|Peter Boettke|Mercatus has produced a nice trailer for my forthcoming book with Alex Salter and Dan Smith. Cambridge is also offering a nice discount ---  Posted by Peter Boettke on May 19, 2021 at 04:12 PM | Permalink| Comments (0) | SEJ Symposium on Covid -- open access for next month|Peter Boettke|Ben Powell and I edited a symposium for the Southern Economic Journal on Covid -- looking at the economic logic, political economy context, history of infectious disease, monetary policy responses to shocks, entrepreneurial responses, regulations, and comparative analysis.Our hope is that the discussion in this issue will stimulate discussion and further research into the economics and political economy of the policy experience we have just lived through since March 2020.  We imagine social scientists will be discussing these issues for many years to come. Posted by Peter Boettke on May 02, 2021 at 12:51 PM | Permalink| Comments (0) | The Struggle for a Better World — February 22, 2021|Peter Boettke|Mercatus webpage for the book was launched yesterday to coincide with the Amazon page. Hope you will explore its pages.  Posted by Peter Boettke on February 23, 2021 at 05:11 PM | Permalink| Comments (0) | Next» Search Our WebsitesChris CoyneDave PrychitkoFrederic SautetPete BoettkePeter T. LeesonSteve HorwitzOur BooksPeter T. Leeson: WTF?! An Economic Tour of the WeirdProfessor Peter T. Leeson: Anarchy Unbound: Why Self-Governance Works Better Than You Think (Cambridge Studies in Economics, Choice, and Society)Peter J. Boettke: Living Economics: Yesterday, Today, and TomorrowChristopher Coyne: Doing Bad by Doing Good: Why Humanitarian Action FailsPaul Heyne, Peter Boettke, David Prychitko: Economic Way of Thinking, The (12th Edition)Steven Horwitz: Microfoundations and Macroeconomics: An Austrian PerspectiveBoettke & Aligica: Challenging Institutional Analysis and Development: The Bloomington SchoolCoyne & Leeson: Media, Development, and Institutional Change (New Thinking in Political Economy Series)Peter T. Leeson: The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of PiratesChristopher Coyne: After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy (Stanford Economics & Finance)Philippe Lacoude and Frederic Sautet (Eds.): Action ou TaxationPeter Boettke and David Prytchitko: Market Process TheoriesPeter Boettke (Ed.): The Legacy of Friedrich von HayekPeter Boettke: The Political Economy of Soviet Socialism: the Formative Years, 1918-1928Peter Boettke: Calculation and Coordination: Essays on Socialism and Transitional Political EconomyFrederic Sautet: An Entrepreneurial Theory of the FirmPeter Boettke & Peter Leeson (Eds.): The Legacy of Ludwig Von MisesPeter Boettke: Why Perestroika Failed: The Politics and Economics of Socialist TransformationPeter Boettke (Ed.): The Elgar Companion to Austrian Economics