2014 Summer Institute

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), and of Hayek's Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F. A. Hayek (2004). Since 2002 he has served as the General Editor of The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, a multi-volume collection of Hayek’s writings. He is a past president of the History of Economics Society and of the Southern Economic Association. In his spare time he enjoys tennis and golf.

Ross Emmett teaches at James Madison College (an undergraduate liberal arts college of public and international affairs) at Michigan State University. An economist with a research specialization in Frank H. Knight and the history of Chicago economics, he teaches at the intersection of economic thought and political thought. He has been a visiting professor at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan (2008 and 2009) and the Center for the Study of Public Choice at George Mason University (2000), and was a Julian Simon Fellow at the Property & Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana in summer 2005. His book Frank Knight and the Chicago School in the History of American Economics was published by Routledge in 2009. He has edited five multi-volume collections, including the Elgar Companion to the Chicago School of Economics (2010).

Kevin Hoover is Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Duke University. Educated at the College of William and Mary, the University of St. Andrews, and Balliol College, Oxford, he has previously held positions at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, University of Oxford (Balliol College, Nuffield College, and Lady Margaret Hall), and the University of California, Davis. He is past president of the History of Economics Society, past chairman of the International Network for Economic Method, past editor of the Journal of Economic Methodology, and current editor of the journal History of Political Economy. He is the author of more than one hundred books and articles in a variety of areas, including the history of economics, macroeconomics and monetary economics, and the methodology and philosophy of economics and econometrics.

Steven G. Medema is Professor of Economics, President's Teaching Scholar, and the Director of the University Honors and Leadership Program at the university of Colorado Denver.  He received his B.A. from Calvin College and his PhD from the Michigan State University.  Dr. Medema is the author of numerous scholarly books and articles, including The Hesitant Hand:  Taming Self-Interest in the History of Economic Ideas (Princeton, 2009) and Economics and the Law:  From Posner to Post Mondernism and Beyond (Princeton, 2006).  He served as Editor of the Journal of the History of Economic Thought from 1999-2008 and as President of the History of Economics Society in 2009-10.  Dr. Medema's current research project explores the history of the use of the Coase theorem in economics, law and beyond.

Matthew Basilico is a G2 in the economics PhD program at Harvard University where he is also an MD-PhD candidate (having completed two years of medical school).  He graduated Harvard College with a concentration in Social Studies, a program which emphasizes the study of pivotal works in the history of social thought (especially continental philosophy).  His interests include growth and behavioral macroeconomics, with a focus on developing countries. He has lived in Malawi for two years and recently co-authored a textbook on global health, Reimagining Global Health, with three medical anthropologists, Paul Farmer, Arthur Kleinman and Jim Kim

Theresa Bauer  is from the University of Minnesota.

Justin Contat is a PhD candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill going on the job market in Fall 2014. He did his undergraduate studies in Mathematics at the University of Florida. His current research interests are Microeconomic Theory and Applied Microeconomic Theory with applications to political lobbying, media markets, and bank failures. This summer he hopes to discuss economic history and methodology, specifically the development of uncertainty in economics and its philosophical justification(s). He is also interested in more normative topics such as ethics and the role of economics in forming social norms. Outside of economics, he's usually either playing guitar, reading P.G. Wodehouse, or cooking Cuban food.

Daniel D'Amico   I received my honors undergraduate B.B.A in economics and marketing from Loyola University New Orleans in 2004 and my Ph.D. from George Mason University in 2008 with field examinations in Austrian economics and constitutional political economy. I currently hold the William Barnett Chair of Free Enterprise Studies and am an Assistant Professor of Economics back at my undergraduate alma mater Loyola. My research is aimed to understand the causes and consequences of incarceration as it relates to economic performance, political power and social order overtime and around the world. By participating in the summer institute I hope to gain perspective about how the intellectual history of political economy and economic policy history may relate to crime and punishment theories and practices through history.  When not researching, teaching and participating in educational outreach, I enjoy CrossFit, Paleo cooking, craft cocktails, tattoo art, and record collecting. I look forward to a great summer institute and meeting everyone.

John Lindner is a second-year doctoral student in the department of economics at Boston College. He completed his undergraduate studies in economics at Oberlin College, and spent the three years after commencement as a Research Analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. His primary interests are in monetary economics and econometrics, but he also has explored topics in public economics and has a particular interest in income inequality and poverty in America. At the Summer Institute, he hopes to gain a detailed background in the development of modern economic models and a more complete history of economic philosophy. He’s also eagerly awaiting this summer’s World Cup.

Andrea Passalacqua is a first year PhD student in Political Economy and Government  (Economics Track) at Harvard University. He is interested in Political Economy, Social Economics and Finance. Before started his PhD, he worked as RA at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and previously at Bocconi University. He obtained both his bachelor and Master's degree in Economics from Bocconi University.

Rustam Romaniuc -I am currently a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Montpellier, France and in Law & Economics at the University of Torino, Italy. I am also a graduate research fellow at the Montpellier Research Centre in Theoretical and Applied Economics (LAMETA). I have an LL.M in Law and Economics from the University of Hamburg, Germany and a master in Economics from the University of Reims, France. I am interested in the history of post-WWII microeconomic analysis, with a particular focus on the interactions between law, economics and psychology.


Joseph Schwarz is currently a graduate student in the Economic and Social History programme at the University of Oxford.  I have not yet finalized my post-Master's plans but I am sympathetic to the idea of starting a PhD in (the history and philosophy of) economics.  My interest in the field can be traced back to my undergraduate degree in Philosophy and Economics at the University of Bayreuth, where I specialized in applied ethics-more specifically, preference utilitarianism-and some microeconomic concepts.  I have been working as a student assistant and academic tutor in economics and anlytical philosophy but also gained some first experience in business at the nultinational technology company in the US.  Outside of my academic and professional career, I have been involved in projects supporting students from non-academic as well as international backgrounds in Germany in various ways.  Last but not least, I am very passionate about playing European handball and the drums.

Andrej Svorencik is a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at University of Utrecht and Research Fellow at the Department of Economics at the University of Mannheim. The overarching theme of my research is the emergence, diffusion, and reception of scientific communities and their related ideas and practices that make these epistemic groups distinct. This entails the history of experimental economics, collective biography of economists (prosopography), but also a census of all extant copies of the first edition of Isaac Newton’s Principia. In my free time I enjoy riding my bike, traveling on airplanes and following the rare book market.


Daniel Thong is a final year Masters student in Oxford. His research interest lies in the philosophical problems of neoclassical economic models. In particular, he is interested in rational choice theory and the problems the theory encounters when applied to social reality. This summer, he hopes to learn more about economic history to better understand the evolution of economic methodology. In his free time, Daniel manages a student-run consulting organization in Oxford, The Oxford Strategy Group, where he applies his knowledge to help consult clients on a wide variety of issues. He is also a big fan of Manchester United, basketball, Texas Hold’em, and he enjoys meeting passionate individuals.

Katie Yewell just completed her second year in the Economics PhD program at Vanderbilt University, where she is interested in studying industrial organization and health economics, with a focus on legal and antitrust issues.  She grew up in Lexington, Kentucky and received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and economics from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee.  Katherine is looking forward to broadening her foundation in economics at the Summer Institute, and to meeting new people in the field.  In her free time, Katherine enjoys organizing social events with her fellow graduate students.  Katherine also loves watching movies, painting, and playing soccer.