In this lecture, Professor Bueno de Mesquita will question the impact of the Protestant Reformation, arguing that it was not a major driver either of northern Europe's economic success or of the decline of Roman Catholicism's sway in Europe. Rather, both, along with Europe's secularization and creation of sovereign states, were predictable products of the Concordat of Worms. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Silver Professor of Politics at New York University. He is an expert on international conflict, foreign policy formation, and nation building. His current research focuses on the links between political institutions, economic growth, and political change. He is also investigating the causes and consequences of international conflict as well as national security policy forecasting and analysis. To learn how you can support the Center and the Hayek Lecture Series, please contact our director, Bruce Caldwell, at 919-660-6896 or bruce.caldwell@duke.edu. Produced by Shaun King, Duke University Department of Political Science.

On Februrary 4th, 2019, Robert Lawson visited Duke University to present his talk, "Economic Freedom & the Wealth and Health of Nations." Robert Lawson is professor of practice and Jerome M. Fullinwider Centennial Chair in Economic Freedom and is director of the O’Neil Center for Global Markets and Freedom at the Southern Methodist University (SMU) Cox School of Business. He previously taught at Auburn University, Capital University, and Shawnee State University. Dr. Lawson is a co-author of the widely-cited Economic Freedom of the World annual reports, which present an economic freedom index for over 150 countries.

Deirdre McCloskey from the University of Illinois at Chicago talks "Free Market Liberalism is Humane"

Tomorrow 3.0: The Philosophy, Politics, and Economics of the New Economy

On March 27, Professor Jessica Flanigan gave a guest lecture to Professor Jonathan Anomaly’s PPE class on her forthcoming book, Pharmaceutical Freedom. Professor Flanigan begins with an overview of the doctrine of informed consent, and gives several different justifications for why competent adults should be trusted with the right to make their own medical choices. Flanigan then argues that if the doctrine of informed consent allows us to refuse treatments that our doctor thinks is advisable, it should also permit us to access risky treatments, even if our doctor thinks it is inadvisable. On Flanigan’s view, different patients have diverse interests and attitudes toward risk, so governments should allow patients to access treatments without a prescription from doctors or permission from government authorities like the US Food and Drug Administration. She notes that antibiotics might be an exception, since their overuse by patients can harm other people by spurring the evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Finally, for those who aren’t willing to eliminate all barriers to accessing risky treatments, Flanigan considers several different ways we might lower these barriers enough to save lives and increase liberty.