2026 Summer Institute

The 2026 Summer Institute on the History of Economics will take place at Duke University from June 2, through June 11, 2026. The Institute will focus on giving participants the tools to set up and teach their own undergraduate course in the history of economic thought. There will also be sessions devoted to demonstrating how concepts and ideas from the history of economics might be introduced into other classes. The sessions will be run by Duke faculty members.

Sessions will be held on campus in 113 Social Sciences. There is no charge for coming to the Institute. Successful applicants who are not locally based will be provided with complimentary bed and breakfast at the AC Durham, a reimbursement for travel expenses (up to $750), and a $250 meal card for use at various Duke University dining venues. Participants will also receive electronic access to most readings (3 books will be purchased by Institute attendees). 

Duke, which boasts five specialists in the field on its faculty, is home to the Center for History of Political Economy, a center whose mission is to promote and support research in, and the teaching of, the history of political economy. The premier journal in the field, History of Political Economy, is published here. 

Eligibility

The Summer Institute programs are designed primarily for PhD graduate students in economics programs in North America. However, applications from students and scholars from other fields and from overseas will be welcomed.

The Institute's faculty will assess applications with regard to: 

  • Academic and professional accomplishments of the candidate.
  • Relevance of the Summer Institute to the candidate's graduate studies and prospective teaching.
  • Expression of interest shown by the candidate for historically informed research in economics.

Application deadline and requirements:

Application Deadline: March 9,2026

Requirements:

Applicants should submit items 1. and 2. compiled as a single PDF.

1.   Curriculum Vitae or brief biography not exceeding four pages.

2.   Cover letter addressing reasons for applying as well as your interest (academic and/or personal) in the history of economics. The letter should also include a statement of what you want to accomplish by participating in the Institute. 

Submission Instructions:

  • Submit via Strongbox. Label your document packet with your last name and the year (e.g. Smith-SI- 2026). After submitting, notify us by emailing chope@econ.duke.edu

If you do not receive an acknowledgment of your application within one to two days, please email us to confirm that we have received your submission.

Successful applicants will be notified of their selection in late March and should respond within a week by accepting or declining the offer.

 

2026 SUMMER INSTITUTE

Tuesday June 2, 2026:

3 pm-6 pm Participants check in to the AC Durham

6 pm Meet in lobby of the AC Durham for transport to opening dinner, location TBD

6:30 pm, Welcome Dinner 

Wednesday June 3, 2026:

[Note: All morning sessions begin at 9:30. All afternoon sessions begin at 2:30. All sessions will be held in 113 Social Sciences.] 

Transportation from the AC Durham will run on the following schedule:

Depart from AC Durham Lobby: 9AM

Depart from Social Sciences: TBA


9:30 am, Session 1 – Introductions of Program and Participants; Tips on Setting Up a History of Economic Thought Course – Caldwell, Medema


The Greeks and Scholastics – Medema

  • Aristotle, Politics and Nichomachean Ethics, excerpts. In Steven Medema and Warren Samuels, eds. The History of Economic Thought: A Reader (2nd ed., New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 4-17. (Henceforth readings found in this book will be noted by M&S.)
  • Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, excerpts, in M&S, pp. 18-34.
  • Michael Munger, “They Clapped: Can Price-Gouging Laws Prohibit Scarcity?”Econlib: https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2007/Mungergouging.html

2:30 pm, Session 2 – Mercantilism – Caldwell

  • Jacob Viner, “Mercantilist Thought” (1968), in Jacob Viner, Essays on the Intellectual History of Economics, Douglas Irwin, ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 262-76.
  • Thomas Mun, England’s Treasure by Forraign Trade (1664), chapters 2-4, in M&S, pp. 35-44.
  • Handout on Historical Background

Supplementary Reading: Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers (6th ed., New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), chapters 1 & 2. A nice intro to the Economic Revolution that spawned more systematic thinking about economics. Lars Magnusson, Mercantilism: The Shaping of Economic Language. London: Routledge, 1994, especially chapters 1 & 2. The historiography of mercantilism.

Thursday June 4, 2026:

9:30 am, Session 3 – Physiocracy; Intro to Smith – Medema; Caldwell

  • François Quesnay, Tableau Economique, in M&S, pp. 106-113.
  • G. Vaggi, “Physiocracy,” The New Palgrave.
  • Loïc Charles and Christine Théré, “From Versailles to Paris: The Creative Communities of the Physiocratic Movement,” History of Political Economy, vol. 43, 2011, pp. 25-58.
  • Handout on Smith
  • Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1766), excerpts.

Supplementary Reading: Loïc Charles, “The Visual History of the Tableau Économique,” European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, vol. 10, 2003, pp. 527-550.

2:30 pm, Session 4 – Smith and the Wealth of Nations - Medema

  • Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations [1776] R. H. Campbell, A. S. Skinner, and W. B. Todd, eds. (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1981). Numbers in parentheses refer to the paragraph numbers of the relevant chapters/sections. Book I, chapters 1, 2, 3 (1, 4), 4 (1, 2, 11-18), 5 (1-7, 17, 21), 6 (1-10), 7, 10c (1-5, 12, 26-30, 33-34, 41-45), 11 (1-9); Book II, chapter 3 (1-3, 19-20, 25, 36); Book IV, chapters 1 (1, 5-6, 9-11), 2 (1-4, 9-12, 38-39, 43-45), 9 (48-52).

Friday June 5, 2026:

9:30 am, Session 5 – Malthus and Ricardo – Brent

  • Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), excerpts, in M&S, pp. 210-225.
  • David Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817), excerpts, in M&S, pp. 265-301.

Supplementary Reading: George Stigler, “Ricardo and the 93 Per Cent Labor Theory of Value,” in Essays in the History of Economics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 326-42.

Lunchtime Breakout Session I – Teaching Liberal Arts Students – Caldwell

2:30 pm, Session 6 – Marx - Medema 

  •  Marx, “Preface: A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy” (1859), in Tucker, pp. 3-6.
  • Engels, “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific” (1880), in Robert Tucker, The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1978), pp. 683-717.
  • Marx and Engels, “The Communist Manifesto” (1848), in Tucker, pp. 469-500, but omit section 3 (pp. 491-99). 

[optional evening event]

6:45 pm, Durham Bulls baseball game.  Depart from the AC Durham 

 

Saturday June 6, 2026:

9:30 am, Session 7 – Marginalism and Marshall – Medema 

  • Mark Blaug, “Was There a ‘Marginal Revolution’?” History of Political Economy, vol. 4, Fall 1972, pp. 269-80.
  • Handout: Alfred Marshall and the Cambridge School
  • Alfred Marshall, The Principles of Economics, 8th ed. (1920): Book I, chapters 1, 4; Book V, chapters 1-3. 

Supplementary Reading: John Whitaker, “Alfred Marshall,” The New Palgrave. E. Roy Weintraub, “Burn the Mathematics (Tripos),” How Economics Became a Mathematical Science (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), chapter 1.  Bruce Caldwell, Hayek’s Challenge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), chapters 1-5. The last describes the development of the Austrian School and its battles with its historicist, socialist, and positivist opponents. 

2:30 pm, Session 8 – Institutionalism – Brent

  • Thorstein Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class [1899], chapters 3 and 4, in M&S, pp. 643-44, 650-75.
  • Malcolm Rutherford, The Institutionalist Movement in American Economics, 1918-1947: Science and Social Control (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), chapter 1. 

Supplementary Reading, Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class, chapter 2, in M&S, pp. 645-50. 

Sunday June 7, 2026 – Free Day

Monday June 8, 2026:

9:30 am, Session 9 – Defining a Modern Science – Medema 

  • Mary S. Morgan, “Economics,” in Theodore M. Porter and Dorothy Ross, eds., The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 7: The Modern Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 275-305.
  • Roger E. Backhouse and Steven G. Medema, “On the Definition of Economics,” Journal of Economic Perspectives vol. 23 (1), 2009, pp. 221-33. 

Lunchtime Breakout Session II – Teaching MBA/Business School Students – Brent 

  • David P. Lepak, Ken G. Smith, and M. Susan Taylor. “Introduction to Special Topic Forum: Value Creation and Value Capture: A Multilevel Perspective,” The Academy of Management Review, vol. 32, 2007, pp. 180-94.

2:30 pm, Session 10 – The Origins of Macroeconomics – Hoover 

  • John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), excerpts (pp. 4-7, 12-17, 96-119).
  • Mary Morgan, “Tinbergen and Macrodynamic Models, chapter 4 of The History of Econometric Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)¸ pp. 101-30.
  • John R. Hicks, “Mr. Keynes and the ‘Classics’: A Suggested Interpretation,” Econometrica vol. 5 (2), April 1937, pp. 147-59. 

Tuesday June 9, 2026:

9:30 am, Session 11 – Game Theory – Brent 

  • Robert Leonard, “From Parlor Games to Social Science: von Neumann, Morgenstern, and the Creation of Game Theory, 1928-1944,” Journal of Economic Literature, vol. 33, June 1995, pp. 730-61.
  • Paul Erikson, “Dreams of a Final Theory,” chapter 7 of The World the Game Theorists Made (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), pp. 240-72. 

Supplementary Reading: John von Neumann, “On the Theory of Games of Strategy,” translated by Mrs. Sonya Bargmann, ms. https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~y328yu/classics/vonNeumann.pdf 

2:30 pm, Session 12 – Post-World War II Keynesianism – Hoover 

  • Lawrence Klein, The Keynesian Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1947), chapter 3.
  • Paul Samuelson, Economics: An Introductory Analysis (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1948), chapter 12. 

Wednesday June 10, 2026:

9:30 am, Session 13 – The Market and The State: Possibilities and Limitations – Medema 

  • A. C. Pigou, “State Action and Laisser-Faire,” in Economics in Practice (London: Macmillan, 1935), pp. 107-28.
  • Francis Bator, “The Anatomy of Market Failure,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 72, 1958, pp. 351-79.
  • James M. Buchanan, “Positive Economics, Welfare Economics, and Political Economy,” Journal of Law and Economics, vol. 2, 1959, pp. 124-38. 

2:30 pm, Session 14 – Monetarism and the New Classical Macroeconomics- Hoover

  • Milton Friedman & Anna Schwartz, “A Summing Up,” chapter 13 of A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1963), pp. 676-700.
  • Kevin Hoover, The New Classical Macroeconomics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), chapters 2-4 (pp. 65-73).

4:45 pm – Visit to the Economists’ Papers Archive, Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Thursday June 11, 2026:

9:30 am, Session 15 – F. A. Hayek, His Life and Ideas – Caldwell (watch video before class with Handout) 

  • Handout on Hayek
  • Video on Hayek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI0uXlNFtV0
  • F. A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society” [1945], reprinted in The Market and Other Orders,  edited by Bruce Caldwell, volume 15 (2014) of The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, chapter 3 (pp. 93-104).
  • F. A. Hayek, “Postscript: Why I Am Not a Conservative,” The Constitution of Liberty [1960], edited by Ronald Hamowy, volume 17 (2011) of The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, pp. 519-33.

The final half hour of Session 15 will be a Summer Institute Wrap-Up – no readings. 

Participants depart AC Durham by 12 noon

 

 
Brent

Jason Brent attended the very first HOPE Summer Institute in Denver, CO, during the summer of 2011. He is currently a fellow at the HOPE Center and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Duke University, teaching in the economics department, the Fuqua School of Business, and the Sanford School of Public Policy. In addition to teaching the survey course in the history of economics at Duke for the past four years, Jason has taught courses across the university on economic reasoning that integrate models from the history of economics with contemporary analysis and issues. These courses have been designed to bridge the gap between modern technical economics and the historic models and ideas that still often dominate discussions in the worlds of policy and business.  Since 2019, Jason has taught a course that focuses on economic theories about the very rich from St. Thomas Aquinas to Thomas Piketty.

Caldwell

Bruce Caldwell is a Research Professor of Economics and the Director of the Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University. He is the author of Beyond Positivism: Economic Methodology in the 20th Century (1982), of Hayek's Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F. A. Hayek (2004), and since 2002 has served as the General Editor of The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, a multi-volume collection of Hayek’s writings. A past president of the History of Economics Society and of the Southern Economic Association, he is currently working on a family-authorized  biography of Hayek. When he's not working on Hayek, he doesn't know what to do, but sometimes he fills his time with tennis and golf. 
 

 

Kevin D. Hoover is Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Duke University and the editor of the journal History of Political Economy.  A macroeconomist, historian of economics, and philosopher of science, he was written extensively on the history of macroeconomics, including on Keynes, the new classical macroeconomics, monetarism, the Phillips curve, and the history of central banking, and the history of econometrics.  He is the author of The New Classical Macroeconomics:  A Sceptical Inquiry and has recently completed a book manuscript on the history of the American pragmatist philosopher Charles Peirce’s engagement with economics.  His work on the microfoundations of macroeconomics and on causation crossing frequently between econometrics, macroeconomics, and the history and philosophy of economics.  He is a past president of the History of Economics Society, a past chairman of the International Network for Economic Method, and a past editor of the Journal of Economic Methodology.  He is the author of The Methodology of Empirical Macroeconomics, Causation in Macroeconomics, and Applied Intermediate Macroeconomics. 

 

Steve Medema

Steve G. Medema the George Family Research Professor in the Department of Economics at Duke University and the Associate Director of the Center for the History of Political Economy. He is the author of The Hesitant Hand: Taming Self-Interest in the History of Economic Ideas (Princeton, 2009), Economics and the Law: From Posner to Post Modernism and Beyond (Princeton, 2006), and The Economics Book: From Xenophon to Cryptocurrency, 250 Milestones in the History of Economics (Sterling, 2019). He currently serves as the general editor of the Oxford Studies in the History of Economics book series, published by Oxford University Press, and was editor of the Journal of the History of Economic Thought from 1999 to 2008. Dr. Medema's current research projects explore the history of the use of Coase theorem in economics, law and beyond, and the evolution of public finance/public economics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

 

 

 

Venue

Travel

  • Duke University is located near downtown Durham. View Larger Map
  • RDU International Airport is located 20 miles from campus. Taxi and Uber services are recommended for travel to and from the airport. The approximate cost of Taxi/ Uber services to/ from the airport is $45.
  • Campus buses operate on a limited schedule during the summer. More information on transportation can be found at Duke University Transportation Services.
  • Participants will be staying at the AC Durham located a 15 minute walk to the Social Sciences building.  A shuttle to and from the hotel and classroom will be available on a limited schedule.    

Weather

  • June in North Carolina can range from 60 degrees in the evenings to 90 during the day. Attire for sessions is casual.

Dining

  • Participants will receive a Duke dining card worth $250 that can be used at the  Brodhead Center or the Bryan Center.
  • The Brodhead Center  in the West Union Building is subject to limited summer hours.
  • For complete details of dining on campus, visit Duke Dining.
  • A wide variety of cuisines are available in Durham. There are some great restaurants and bars on Ninth Street and along Main Street downtown. These two streets can be accessed by taking a bus to East Campus and then taking a short stroll to either location. 

Library Hours

  • Find library hours here.

Health

  • In the event of a life-threatening emergency, participants should go directly to the Emergency Department (684-2413). If necessary, Duke Police (911 or 684-2444) will provide on-campus transportation to the Emergency Department.

Banking

  •  ATMs can be located on the garden level of the Bryan Center.

Durham Events/Info

  • Find a calendar of events and information on things to do in the area here.

For questions about the Summer Institute, please email chope@econ.duke.edu.

Applications should be received electronically no later than March 9, 2026. See "How to Apply" for more details. Successful applicants will be notified of their selection by mid March and should respond within a week by accepting or declining the offer.