The Great Antidote
Adam Smith said, "Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition." So join us for interviews with the leading experts on today's biggest issues to learn more about economics, policy, and much more.
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Send us a text Welcome back! Happy New Year! Glad to be back! Come one, come all! Eric Leeper is the Paul Goodloe McIntire Professor in Economics at the University of Virginia. He also is a visiting scholar at the Mercatus Center at GMU. Today, we talk about inflation. He explains to us how inflation theory has evolved
Send us a text Not often do we find people who make the case for how race, liberty, and equality belong together. Even less often do we find them making arguments in the height of racially and economically troubled times. And EVEN LESS do we find audio clips of them doing so. These people are inspiring. They stand up
Send us a text Adam Smith was a man who read the Stoics. He liked them, too, talking them up in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, particularly in the section on grief. Then he lost two of his closest relations (old timey, right?), David Hume and his mother. These world-shaking events caused him to reevaluate what he sai
Send us a text This year’s Nobel Prize winners in economics are Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson, who wrote on the importance of inclusive institutions to economic growth. But what on earth are ‘inclusive institutions’ and how do they differ from exclusive ones? Inclusive institutions are norms, either
Send us a text Picture a policy conversation, perhaps in Washington, about national security. Who’s sitting around the table? It might be the President, national security advisors, military personnel, or generals, but not economists. And yet, national security is often used as a reason to intervene into the economy. A
Send us a text How do you teach about a man who does not fit neatly into a box? Hayek is one such man, and today, we tackle the difficult task of putting him in a box. We conclude that we cannot put someone like F. A. Hayek into boxes such as “economist” or “philosopher” or “political theorist”, because he did it all.