Spring 2012 Term Starts Today at GMU

|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.
Here are the respective syllabi for Econ 828 and Econ 895.  
For 828, we begin the course discussing the relationship between public finance, public choice, and political economy and social philosophy.  I highly recommend to all who care about these issues to read the book Public Finance and Public Choice, which contains contrasting lecture transcripts from Richard Musgrave and James Buchanan.  It really sets up the reasons why political economists must cross over from the field of public finance/public economics, to the field of political philosophy before coming back again to provide reasonable answers to questions about the scale and scope of government from an economic point of view.
Given the purpose of 895, and the background of the students, there is a supplemental reading list that will serve as the basis for possible arbitrage opportunities within the journals: 

DATE

TOPIC

READING

January 24

Change Within Permanence: Why Austrian Economics Matters for the Science of Economics

Kirman, “The Intrinsic Limits of Economics” (1989)

January 31

Opacity and Human Action: The Future is Unknowable But Not Unimaginable

Coddington, “Creaking Semaphor and Beyond” (1975)
Samuelson, “Modeling Knowledge in Economic Analysis” (2004)

Feb 7

Rationality and All That

Anand, “The Philosophy of Intransitive Preferences” (1993)
Gode and Sunder, “Allocative Efficiency of Markets with Zero-Intelligence Traders” (1993)

Feb 14

The Marvel of the Market

Fisher, “Stability, Disequilibrium Awareness, and the Perception of New Opportunities” (1981)
Gode and Sunder, “What Makes Markets Allocationally Efficient?” (1997)

Feb 21

Beyond Magical Markets

Makowski and Ostroy, “Perfect Competition and the Creativity of the Market” (2001)
Axtel, “The Complexity of Exchange” (2005)

Feb 28

Studying Human Action Once More

Koppl, “Rational Choice Hermeneutics” (2004)
Samuelson, “Foundations of Human Sociality: A Review Essay” (2005)

March 6

Analytical History as Social Science

Elster, “Rational Choice History: A Case of Excessive Ambition,” (2000)
Bates, et al, “The Analytic Narrative Project” (2000)

March 13

SPRING BREAK

SPRING BREAK

March 20

The Theory of Complex Phenomena

Rosser, “On the Complexities of Economic Dynamics” (1999)
Durlauf, “Complexity and Empirical Economics” (2005)

March 27

Institutional Diversity and Social Cooperation

Ostrom, “A Behavioral Approach to the Rational Choice Theory of Collective Action” (1997)
Ostrom, “Beyond Markets and States” (2010)

April 3

APEE

APEE

April 10

Heterogeneity, Multiple Specificity and Economic Calculation

Dixit, “Investment and Hysteresis” (1992)
MacLeod, “Reputations, Relationships, and Contract Enforcement” (2007) 

April 17

On the Manipulation of Money and Credit

Selgin, et al, “Has the Fed Been a Failure?” (2012)
Diamond and Rajan, “Illiquid Banks, Financial Stability, and Interest Rate Policy” (2011)

April 24

Robust Political Economy

Acemoglu, “Constitutions, Politics, and Economics,” (2005)
Rauch, “Getting the Properties Right to Secure Property Rights” (2005)

May 1

Creativity, Complexity and Coordination

Markose, “Computability and Evolutionary Complexity” (2005)
Koppl, “Thinking Impossible Things” (2008)

 
Also, I am the director of the Workshop in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, which starts this Friday. The PPE workshop serves as the center piece of our weekly research activities for those of us interested in Ausrian economics, political economy, and classical liberalism, and has been in continuous operation since I moved to GMU in 1998.   If you are visiting the DC area and are interested in attending, please contact me at pboettke@gmu.edu to double check about time, place and availability.