Hayek Program Podcast

Mikayla Novak interviews author Seth Kaplan on his latest book, Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society, One Zip Code at a Time. In this book, he addresses the decline in American neighborhoods characterized by rising crime, school violence, family disintegration, addiction, alienation, and despair. Kaplan applies his insights to the American context, emphasizing the importance of relationships and social dynamics in building healthy societies. He advocates for neighborhood-based solutions, highlighting the role of 'community quarterbacks' or social entrepreneurs in organizing local improvements. In this conversation, Kaplan also touches on the impacts of migration, the importance of practical approaches, the characteristics of robust neighborhoods, and emphasizes the need for more intentional community-building efforts to improve societal health and individual well-being.Seth D. Kaplan is a leading expert on fragile states. He is a Professorial Lecturer in the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced Inter

On this episode, we’ll hear a book panel discussion on Christopher J. Coyne’s book,In Search of Monsters to Destroy: The Folly of American Empire and the Paths to Peace (Independent Institute, 2023). In his comments, Coyne challenges the notion that the US military is necessary for global order, explaining that without the US as the global police force chaos will not overtake the world, and questions the efficacy and morality of a militaristic, top-down approach to global conflict. Coyne breaks down the history of the American empires into three phases: continental expansion, overseas imperialism, and global hegemony, and describes the features of the present-day American empire and the interventionist mindset. He argues that foreign intervention and the effort to export democracy to other nations by illiberal means can only lead to illiberal ends. A liberal empire is ultimately illiberal. He calls for reimagining our understanding of peace as a community-driven process, emphasizing the role of human imaginat

Peter Boettke sits down with Bryan Cheang, discussing unveiling liberalism in Southeast Asia. In this conversation, Bryan begins with discourse on the synthesis of different schools of thought in economic growth and development, stressing the importance of considering the relationship between cultural differences, classical liberalism, and economic development. He points out that in Asia, many countries adopted capitalist practices but remained authoritarian, challenging the notion that capitalism and freedom always go hand in hand. Bryan also argues for a broadening of methodological approaches in economics to include cultural and historical contexts of individuals.Bryan Cheang is the Assistant Director of the Centre for the Study of Governance & Society. He received his PhD and MA in Political Economy from King’s College London and is a graduate of the National University of Singapore. He has authored three books including Economic Liberalism and the Developmental State: Hong Kong and Singapore’s Post-w

On this episode, we’ll hear a book panel discussion on David Schmidtz’s book, Living Together: Inventing Moral Science (Oxford University Press, 2023). In his comments, Schmidtz discusses his academic journey and the reshaping of his philosophical views, emphasizing real-world observations over theoretical debates, and comments on the work of Adam Smith and David Hume. He stresses the necessary role of humility in sciences and highlights how game theory has challenged the pre-existing theoretical frameworks of human behavior, underscoring the limitations of theories in explaining complex, human interactions. The panel is moderated by Peter J. Boettke, and they are joined on the panel by:Ryan Muldoon, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Philosophy, and the Director of the Philosophy, Political Science, and Economics Program at the University at Buffalo, and author of Social Contract Theory for a Diverse World: Beyond ToleranceMargaret Schabas, Canadian Phil

We're celebrating 300 years of Adam Smith! On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, we'll hear a keynote from the 2023 Markets & Society conference given by Emma Rothschild, the Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History at Harvard University. In this lecture, Emma Rothschild begins by building an understanding of Adam Smith's conception of markets. She reanalyzes Smith's "invisible hand" metaphor, challenging the traditional interpretation and suggesting that it might not primarily refer to markets or economic equilibrium but rather the economics of uncertainty and trust. Emma also discusses Frank Knight, F.A. Hayek, Smith's frustration with the frivolity of markets, the abolition of feudalism, the four bad markets, Smith's hope for the future, and more.This lecture is part of the University of Glasgow’s Smith@300: Celebrating Adam Smith as Scholar, Educator, and Citizen supported by the John Templeton Foundation.The introduction is given by Craig Smith.Read more about Emma Rothschild.If you like

Welcome back to the Environmental Economics series, hosted by Jordan Lofthouse. On this episode, he interviews Bobbi Herzberg on a polycentric approach to solving climate change. Bobbi and Jordan discuss the importance and meaning of "polycentricity", how we can vote with our feet, major themes from public choice, Elinor Ostrom's work on climate change, and the six advantages that polycentric systems have for coping with climate change: (1) competition among decision makers, (2) cooperation among decision makers, (3) perceptions of legitimacy that lead to coproduction, (4) mutual learning through experimentation, (5) institutional resilience/robustness, and (6) emergent outcomes that are socially desirable but not centrally planned.Bobbi Herzberg is a Distinguished Senior Fellow for the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and a Senior Research Fellow. Previously, she served as assistant director of individual freedom & free markets at the John Templeton Foundation

This week, Peter Boettke interviews Jennifer Burns, author of Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative. Milton Friedman achieved tremendous sucess as an economist including being a John Bates Clark Medal winner, a Nobel Prize winner, and the president of the American Economic Association (AEA). In this episode, they discuss Friedman's time at Columbia University, the origin of his economic theory, the influence of Frank Knight, Friedman's female coauthors including Anna Schwartz and Rose Friedman, Friedman's association to conservatism, and more.Jennifer Burns is an Associate Professor of History at Stanford University and a Research Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace. She is the author of Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative (November, 2023) and Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (2009). An expert on this history of conservative ideas and politics, she has written for The NewYork Times, The Financial Times, Bloomberg, and Dissent, and has discussed her w

This episode of the Hayek Program Podcast is a special crossover episode from Virtual Sentiments, S1E9, with a special introduction by Jayme Lemke to celebrate the start of Season 2! Go check out S2E1 of Virtual Sentiments featuring Christopher Coyne today!On this, the last episode of Season 1 of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen Collins interviews Eileen Hunt, a Professor and Political Theorist at the University of Notre Dame, on Mary Shelley and the Ethics of AI. Hunt begins by providing historical context of Mary Shelley regarding her parents and Shelley as a child of the Enlightenment. Hunt explains the interdisciplinary nature of Mary Shelley’s work, rooted in a Grecian philosophical past and concerned with future-oriented questions about the rights of human beings, tying in Mary Shelley’s famous Gothic novel, Frankenstein, to modern considerations of the ethics and rights of artificial life. She encourages us to think of ourselves as artificial, technological creatures and to contemplate the rights of all art

Continuing our series on Enviromental Economics, host Jordan Lofthouse chats with Katie Wright about sustainability, extensive and intensive margins, intellectual humility in statistical analysis, how her experience in Mercatus fellowships has aided her research, the nature of the water scarcity problem in the Western United States, and more.Katherine (Katie) Wright is a research fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC). She is an expert on water policy and her current work includes exploration of solutions to western water scarcity. Katie is an alum of the Mercatus Oskar Morgenstern Fellowship.If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Virtual Sentiments, our new podcast series from the Hayek Program is now streaming! Subscribe today and listen to season one on digital democracy.Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about

On this episode, we’ll hear a book panel discussion on Randall Holcombe’s book, Following Their Leaders: Political Preferences and Public Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2023). In it, Holcombe examines how expressive voting preferences are determined and how we tend to adopt the preferences of the political elite. The panel is moderated by Christopher J. Coyne, and they are joined on the panel by:Roger D. Congleton, Truist Professor of Economics at West Virginia University Bobbi Herzberg, Distinguished Senior Fellow for the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and a Senior Research FellowMichael C. Munger, Professor of Political Science, and Director of the PPE Certificate Program at Duke UniversityRandall G. Holcombe is the DeVoe Moore Professor of Economics at Florida State University.If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your po

Welcome to our new series, Environmental Economics, hosted by Jordan Lofthouse!Jordan Lofthouse sits down with Megan Jenkins to talk about endangered species, Prairie dogs in cemeteries, issues of incentive alignment, the rise of private conservation, the willing buyer and willing seller approach, and more.Megan E. Jenkins is the Senior Director of Research at the Center for Growth and Opportunity where she manages the Center’s portfolio of policy-relevant research while ensuring student fellows receive quality mentorship and hands-on research experience. Megan is an alum of the Mercatus Frédéric Bastiat Fellowship. To learn more about her work at CGO.Learn more about the Center for Growth and Opportunity's fellowships.If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Virtual Sentiments, our new podcast series from the Hayek Program is now streaming! Subscribe today and lis

On this episode, we complete our three-part miniseries on Civil Society, hosted by Mikayla Novak who explores civil society, encompassing the practical nature of voluntary mutual assistance outside but entangled with the domains of market and state, the theoretical dimensions of civil society, and the intersection of classical liberalism and civil society.Joining Novak for this episode is Paul Dragos Aligica, discussing the impact of growing up in communist Romania, the importance of human freedom, the "third sector" or voluntary and nonprofit sectors, the variety of institutional organizational forms associated to civil society, Ostromian polycentricity, checking central power, and more.Paul Dragos Aligica is a senior research fellow and senior fellow at the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Learn more about his work. If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We'

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Rosolino Candela interviews Peter Boettke on his most recent book, The Road to Socialism and Back: An Economic History of Poland, 1939-2019, coauthored with Konstantin Zhukov and Matthew Mitchell.Pete and Rosolino dive into the world of scarcity and limited information, discussing the road to socialism and back. What does socialism lead to? What is necessary for countries to transition from poverty to wealth? Why did Poland do better than its neighbors? Have we overcome poverty today?They answer these questions and more and discuss the transitional gains trap, factors of recovery such as overcoming the pathology of privilege, shock therapy vs. gradualism and the issues with simultaneity, and the importance of critical people at critical times.Peter Boettke is Vice President for Advanced Study, Director of the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, as well as the BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism at the Mercatus C

On this special crossover episode, Ideas of India podcast host, Shruti Rajagopalan, interviews Peter Boettke on Austrian economics and the knowledge problem. In this, the second half of their conversation, Boettke speaks on the feasibility of technosocialism, why artificial intelligence will not solve the knowledge problem, what many economists throughout history misunderstood about the market process, mainline vs. mainstream economics and more.If you liked this two-part series with Shruti Rajagopalan, go check out the Ideas of India Podcast!Shruti Rajagopalan is a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center, a Fellow at the Classical Liberal Institute at New York University School of Law, and host of the Ideas of India Podcast. Previously, she was an Associate Professors of Economics at Purchase College, State University of New York.Learn more about Shruti Rajagopalan's work here.If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts

On this special crossover episode, Ideas of India podcast host, Shruti Rajagopalan, interviews Peter Boettke on Austrian economics and the knowledge problem. In this, the first half of their conversation, Boettke speaks on the writings of FA Hayek, the knowledge problem, calculation versus coordination, markets and institutions, the marginalists, issues of perfect competition, and much more!Check back on August 9th for the second part of this conversation or check out the Ideas of India Podcast to get early access to the full episode!Shruti Rajagopalan is a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center, a Fellow at the Classical Liberal Institute at New York University School of Law, and host of the Ideas of India Podcast. Previously, she was an Associate Professors of Economics at Purchase College, State University of New York.Learn more about Shruti Rajagopalan's work here.If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotif

*We've improved this audio!* Due to the style and age of recording for this particular event, some audio quality issues may still persist. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, we revisit a 2010 event where Professor Emeritus of Economics at George Mason University and Nobel Laureate James M. Buchanan was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Fund for the Study of Spontaneous Orders at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation.This event was co-hosted by the Fund for the Study of Spontaneous Orders at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, Liberty Fund, the George Mason University Economics Department, and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and took place at George Mason University’s Fairfax campus.The panel discussion of Buchanan’s work was led by the Dean Emeritus of the GMU Law School, Henry Manne, who was joined by:Amartya K. Sen, Nobel Prize winner in Economic Sciences, 1998, Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and P

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, we revisit a keynote lecture given by Israel Kirzner on the revival of Austrian economics. In 2014, the Mercatus F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics hosted a keynote speech and panel discussion by some of Friedrich Hayek’s most prominent colleagues and interlocutors to reflect on the significance of Hayek’s Nobel Prize and the various strands of influence his work has had in subsequent decades of scholarship. In this installment of the series, Distinguished New York University Professor Emeritus Israel M. Kirzner delivers the keynote address on the revival of Austrian economics, focusing specifically on the history of Austrian economics and how Hayek's Nobel Prize paved the way for this revival.If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Virtual Sentiments, our new podcast series f

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, we continue our three-part miniseries on Civil Society, hosted by Mikayla Novak who explores civil society, encompassing the practical nature of voluntary mutual assistance outside but entangled with the domains of market and state, the theoretical dimensions of civil society, and the intersection of classical liberalism and civil society.Joining Novak for this episode is Lenore Ealy, vice-rector internacional at Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala, discussing the history of philanthropy and social design. Ealy begins by describing her work with Richard Cornuelle, sparking Ealy’s early interest in understanding philanthropy, the history of civil society, and liberal individualism. She examines the role of government involvement in nonprofit organizations, learned helplessness, and the problems afflicting philanthropy. She elaborates on our inability to successfully construct an organized social design, referring to the work of Vincent and Elinor Ostrom. N

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Stefanie Haeffele interviews Erwin Dekker and Valeria Morea on their new book, Realizing the Values of Art: Making Space for Cultural Civil Society. Dekker and Morea discuss their concept of cultural civil society, how art is practiced in creative circles and co-creative communities. They consider the environment from which prominent art movements emerged in the modern day, highlighting case-studies on hip hop, festivals, and a queer museum, and analyze the role of public policy in the worlds of art and equality.Erwin Dekker is a Senior Fellow with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. To learn more about Erwin DekkerValeria Morea is a Lecturer and Researcher in the Erasmus School of History, Culture & Communication at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and a James Buchanan Fellow at the Mercatus Center. To learn more about Valeria MoreaStef

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, we begin our three-part miniseries on Civil Society, hosted by Mikayla Novak who explores civil society, encompassing the practical nature of voluntary mutual assistance outside but entangled with the domains of market and state, the theoretical dimensions of civil society, and the intersection of classical liberalism and civil society. Joining Novak for this episode is Leah Kral, Senior Director of Strategy and Innovation at the Mercatus Center and author of her book, “Innovation for Social Change: How Wildly Successful Nonprofits Inspire and Deliver Results,” discussing what makes a nonprofit organization successful. Kral begins by detailing her journey through Jamaica which sparked her interest in public policy and, eventually, nonprofit management. She considers the impact of mainline economics and classical liberalism on her work, and explains key factors for nonprofit success including principles of teamwork, incentives for innovation in nonprofits, the role