Deirdre McCloskey and The New Theory of Moral Sentiments

|Peter Boettke| I am always excited to get back to school.  This term I am teaching two graduate courses --- Econ 828 -- Constitutional Economics, which is basically a course in social and political philosophy for economists --- and Econ 895 -- Advanced Topics in Austrian Economics --- which is the third course available to PhD students, and we are focusing on the themes of creativity, complexity and coordination.

|Peter Boettke| A core claim of the modern Austrian school of economics as reflected in the work of Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek is the possibility of social cooperation under the division of labor in the 'great society'.  Strangers are brought into cooperation with one another through exchange.

|Peter Boettke|

|Peter Boettke| #1 on the list is the new working paper by Selgin, Lastrapes and White on the close to 100 year history of the policy failure of the Fed.  The abstract reads:

|Peter Boettke|

|Peter Boettke| In his 1922 book Socialism, Mises argued that in the stationary state of equilibrium there would be no problem of economic calculation.  This theme is repeated again in Human Action.  But assuming this establishes the theoretical possibility of economic calculation under socialism commits two fundamental errors: (1) misplaced concreteness, and (2) disregard for the social institutions that are required for economic calculation.

|Peter Boettke| Deirdre McCloskey's new book, Bourgeois Dignity has been released by U of Chicago Press.  This is the second volume of a now proposed 6 volume work that McCloskey has undertaken. Here she is discussing the work recently at the University of Richmond.    

|Peter Boettke| Chris Coyne and I attended a wonderful meeting yesterday at the Henry Hazlitt Center. These people care deeply about pedagogy, but more importantly about content.  Both of us walked away very inspired.