The Great Antidote

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.

Send us a text It’s often said that if you want to get to know someone, you should look through their garbage. Now, I don’t recommend this method of getting to know someone (it’s kind of gross). But biographers often have the luck of getting to know the people they study by looking through their stuff- that stuff not b

Send us a text The title of this episode might confuse you: what on earth do Adam Smith and F. A. Hayek have to say about social justice? A surprising amount, given how much we talk about it! Smith makes a big point of critiquing men of pride and vanity. What happens when those ultimately negative aspects of humanity g