2019 Summer Institute

The 2019 Summer Institute on the History of Economics took place at Duke University from June 10 through 19, 2019. Sessions were held in the Fuqua School of Business. The Institute focused on giving participants the tools to set up and teach their own undergraduate course in the history of economic thought. There were also sessions devoted to showing how concepts and ideas from the history of economics might be introduced into other classes. The sessions were run by Duke faculty members Bruce Caldwell and Jason Brent, who were joined by Steve Medema of the University of Colorado–Denver.

There was no charge for coming to the Institute, and successful applicants who were not locally based were provided with complimentary housing (double occupancy) in the J. B. Duke Hotel, a new hotel on West Campus that is next door to Fuqua (where the sessions were held). Participants also received a booklet of readings.

Duke, which boasts four 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. 

Monday June 10, 2019

3 pm-6 pm   Participants check in to J. B. Duke Hotel

6 pm Meet in lobby of J. B. Duke Hotel

6:30 pm, Welcome Dinner at the campus pub, the Devil’s Krafthouse

All sessions will be held in the Class of 2008 classroom on the 1st level of the Fuqua School of Business.

Tuesday June 11, 2019:  

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

The Greeks – 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.)

2:30 pm, Session 2 – Scholasticism and Mercantilism (begin) – Caldwell  

  • Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, excerpts, in M&S, pp. 18-27.
  • 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.

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.

Wednesday June 12, 2019:

9:30 am, Session 3 – Mercantilism (end) – Caldwell, and Physiocracy – Medema

  • François Quesnay, Tableau Economique, picture of the Tableau, in M&S, pp. 106-08.
  • G. Vaggi, “Physiocracy,” The New Palgrave

2:30 pm, Session 4 – The Scottish Enlightenment and Adam Smith – Caldwell

  • Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1766), excerpts.
  • Jacob Viner, “Adam Smith and Laissez-Faire” (1927), in Jacob Viner, Essays, op. cit., pp. 85-113.
  • 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), Smith’s Introduction and Plan of the Work; Book I, chapters 1, 2, 3, 4 (sections 1-4, 11-18).

**Wednesday night, 7:00: Durham Bulls baseball game** (Tickets have already been purchased for you.)

Thursday June 13, 2019:

9:30 am, Session 5 – Smith and The Wealth of Nations - Medema

  • The Wealth of Nations, Book I, chapters 5 (sections 1-17), 6 (sections 1-10), 7, 10c (section 27 – p. 145), 11p (sections 7-10, pp. 265-67). Book II, chapter 3 (sections 1 -3, 12 -18, 30-32); Book IV, chapter 1 (sections 1 – 10), 2 (sections 1-15, 23-24, 31, 37-38, 40, 43), 9 (sections 50-52); Book V, chapter 1.

2:30 pm, Session 6 – Malthus and Ricardo – Brent

  • Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), excerpts, in M&S, pp. 210-225.
  • Henry William Spiegel, The Growth of Economic Thought (3rd ed., Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), Chapter 14, pp. 308-12, 319-331.

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.

Friday June 14, 2019:

9:30 am, Sessions 7 – Marx – Caldwell and Medema

2:30 pm, Session 8 – Marx – Caldwell and Medema

From Robert Tucker, The Marx-Engels Reader. NY: Norton, 1978.

  • Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy [1859] (pp. 3-6)
  • “The Communist Manifesto” (pp. 473-91; 499-500. Omit section III.)
  • “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific” (pp. 681-717)
  • A taste of Das Kapital: I, chapter 7, sec. 2 (pp. 351-61); I, chapter 25 (pp. 419-35)

Saturday June 15, 2019:

9:30 am, Session 9 – Marginalism, and the Methodenstreit – Caldwell

  • Mark Blaug “Was There a ‘Marginal Revolution’?” History of Political Economy, vol. 4, Fall 1972, pp. 269-80.
  • Bruce Caldwell, Hayek’s Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F. A. Hayek (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 17-35.
  • Philip Mirowski, “Physics and the ‘Marginalist Revolution’,” Cambridge Journal of Economics, vol. 8, 1984, pp. 361-79.

Supplementary Reading: E. Roy Weintraub, “Burn the Mathematics (Tripos),” How Economics Became a Mathematical Science (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), chapter 1.
Caldwell, Hayek’s Challenge, chapters 2-5.

2:30 pm, Session 10 – Marginalism, Marshall and Cambridge – Medema 

  • Alfred Marshall, The Principles of Economics, 8th ed. (1920): Book I, chapters 1, 4; Book V, chapters 1-3.
  • John Whitaker, “Alfred Marshall,” The New Palgrave

Sunday June 16, 2019 – Free Day

Monday June 17, 2019:

9:30 am, Session 11 – American 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.

2:30 pm, Session 12 – Keynes – Caldwell

  • John Maynard Keynes, “The End of Laissez-Faire” [1926], in M&S, pp. 622-25.
  • Keynes, J. M. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1936), Chapter 1, p. 3; Chapter 2, pp. 18-22; Chapter 3, pp. 32-34; Chapter 12; Chapter 22, pp. 313-320, Chapter 24.
  • Bradley Bateman, “Keynes and Keynesianism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Keynes, edited by Roger E. Backhouse and Bradley W. Bateman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 2006, pp. 271-90.

Tuesday June 18, 2019: Approaches to Teaching the More Recent History of Economics

9:30 am, Session 13 – Behavioral Economics – Brent

  • Thaler, R. H. “From Homo Economicus to Homo Sapiens,”The Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 14, 2000, pp. 133-141.
  • Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. Prospect Theory: An analysis of Decision under Risk,” Econometrica (Pre-1986), vol. 47, 1979, pp.

Supplementary Reading: Kahneman, Daniel, et al. “Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem.” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 98, 1990, pp. 1325–1348.

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

  • Lepak, David P., 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 14 – The Coase Theorem – Medema

  • Ronald H. Coase, “The Problem of Social Cost,” Journal of Law and Economics, Oct. 1960, vol. 3, pp. 1-44.

Supplementary Reading: Steve Medema, “The Coase Theorem at Sixty,” manuscript.

Wednesday June 19, 2019:

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: start at minute 4:
  • 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, “Individualism: True and False” [1945], reprinted in Studies on the Abuse and Decline of Reason: Texts and Documents, edited by Bruce Caldwell, volume 13 (2010) of The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek. Prelude (pp. 46-74).

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

Participants depart J. B. Duke Hotel by 12 noon

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. 
 
Medema
Steve G. Medema is University Distinguished 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 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 Modernism 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.
 
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. As part of an ongoing project, in the spring of 2019 he introduced a new course for Duke undergraduates on economic analyses of the wealthy, again combining writings by Aquinas, Smith, Malthus, Marx, Veblen, and others with contemporary thinkers to look at how economists think – and have thought – about determinants of income and wealth, inequality, investment, and consumption among the very rich.

Nick Cohen is a 2nd year PhD student in history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His primary field of research is 20th century United States political economy, with a particular interest in culture, crisis, and finance. His most recent research project examined the political and business discourse surrounding commercial banking in the United States before, during, and after the emergence of the “LDC Debt Crisis” in 1982. He holds a BA in history and economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  
Jay D. Dhar is a Ph.D. student in Economics at the University of Arizona, with research interests in experimental economics and economic history, especially as they relate to transportation, environmental, and trade/integration issues. His current experimental research focuses on examining the reasoning of citizens and economic agents as they consider agreements to fully integrate capital, labor, and trade flows between a developed country and a developing country (as has occurred in the European Union), and his current empirical research focuses on the impact of last-mile all-weather road access on the diffusion and adoption of automobiles and motortrucks on American farms in the 20th century.  
 

Ani Ghosh is a first-year doctoral student in the Economics program at Johns Hopkins University. His previous academic training has been at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) where as an Inlaks scholar he graduated with an MSc. degree in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics. At Hopkins, he has been involved in specific inquiries in the historical underpinnings of economics literature, especially the work of John Rawls and Gerard Debreu and their possible linkages. He believes that these queries will not only help the profession get a more informed appreciation of Rawls’ ideas, but will also foster deeper understanding of Gerard Debreu’s corpus and its evolution. ​While building on these two projects, he is keen on having intellectual history as a major part of his research agenda. He is excited to be a part of the 2019 SI Institute and he looks forward to meet an amazing group of scholars!

Laurie Hakes is a PhD student in economics at Boston University. Her primary fields of interest are development economics and political economy, with an emphasis on climate and energy topics. Her current research focuses on the process of rural electrification, its impact on quality of life, and barriers to grid expansion in low- and middle-income countries. Prior to pursuing a PhD in economics, Laurie earned a BS in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked at the U.S. Department of Energy.

Kepler Illich is a PhD student in Economics at the University of California, Davis. His industry experience lies in the healthcare and technology sectors. While he is just beginning his economics research career, he is pursuing research related to the impacts of the Affordable Care Act and upcoming changes in the economy including regulatory changes in U.S. healthcare and advances in machine learning. He is also interested in the interplay between changing economic thought and advances in economic growth.
Andreas Kramer is a 2018-19 HOPE Center fellow. He is researching the economic thought of Vienna around 1900. For more on Andreas, please see his HOPE Center profile.
 

John Kroencke is a PhD student at George Mason University where he is a Hayek Fellow with the Mercatus Center. Prior to graduate school, he earned a BA in Mathematical Economics from Hampden-Sydney College. In this past year, he has taught two sections of development economics in which he sought to integrate the history of the field into lectures. His research focuses on issues in historic and contemporary land use regulation and the history of economics. In his free time, John enjoys travelling and hiking.  

Thomas Krumel is a Ph.D. candidate in Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Connecticut. He utilizes program evaluation techniques to better understand microeconometric topics ranging from residential segregation in rural communities to peer effects in higher education. Thomas is also a Visiting Adjunct Professor at American International College where he teaches both undergraduate and MBA courses.   
Pavel Kuchař teaches History of Economic Thought at the University of Bristol. He worked previously at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and the Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (China). Pavel’s research interests are focused on economics of institutions, entrepreneurship and history of economics; his work has been published in the Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Econ Journal Watch, and others. Currently Pavel and his co-author work on an edited volume for the Cambridge University Press series on Knowledge Commons.
 

Ivan Larsen is a 3rd year Economics PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his BS in mathematics and economics from the University of Miami. He is interested in industrial organization, applied econometrics, and public finance. He is working on topics such as collusion beyond price outcomes and the role of vertical relationships on shaping the equilibrium in a new market. At the Institute, he hopes to gain a fuller picture of the history of economic thought to broaden his horizons and better understand how the field evolved.

Andrew Lynn recently earned a PhD in Sociology from the University of Virginia and now works as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. His dissertation, which explored the historical formation of economic ideas among American Evangelical Protestantism, is currently under contract with Oxford University Press. His current research seeks to better illuminate the linkage between the history of economic ideas and contemporary ethical understandings of managerial capitalism. While interested in broad political and social questions of moral agency exercised within institutional settings, Andrew's approach seeks to foreground the cultural, historical, and intellectual factors that bear impact on how actors navigate everyday practices and decision-making. He has also published work related to organizational theory, political economy, and the social ecology of urban environments.

Mark McAdam is a Ph.D. candidate in International Political Economy at Witten/Herdecke University (Germany). His research focuses on the role ideas play in effecting public policy outcomes generally, with a specific emphasis on the formulation of trade policy in the John F. Kennedy administration. He is particularly interested in the history of economic thought because he believes that other social sciences can utilize its insights for their own methodologies. When not researching in archives or writing, he enjoys (European) football, hiking, cooking, and traveling.

Brandon McCoy is a visiting instructor at Skidmore College and doctoral candidate at the University of Missouri- Kansas City. His current research interests reside at the intersection of employment policy, labor market outcomes, and history of economics. Recognizing the importance analyzing complex social issues through multiple lenses, Brandon’s research and teaching emphasizes the importance of a pluralistic approach that remains historically informed. In pursuing leisure, Brandon considers himself a motorcycle enthusiast, avid outdoorsman, and amateur mechanic.

Megan McCoy is a rising second year student in the economics doctoral program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the current president of the Graduate Women in Economics association at UNC-Chapel Hill. She earned her bachelor’s degree in mathematics and economics from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla. Megan’s research interests vary from gender differences in labor market outcomes to the economic consequences of emerging innovative firms on oligopolistic industries. From the Duke HOPE Center Summer Institute, Megan hopes to gain a mastery of the core material taught in a History of Economic Thought course in order to guide other students through this history.

Jiri Nohejl is the Chief Economist at classical liberal free-market think-tank Liberalni Institut (Prague, Czech Republic) founded in 1989. He received master’s degree in Finance and Banking and master’s degree in Applied Informatics from University of Economics Prague where he also lectured graduate seminars of “Law and Economics”. In 2014 he was visiting scholar at George Mason University’s Department of Economics. His academic interests are in Political Economy, Complexity Economics, Monetary Economics and Austrian School of Economics with main focus on interdisciplinary dovetailing between economics and informatics where he perceives work of F. A. Hayek and modern development of AI as a progressive research program in the tradition of emergent order scholarship.

Rok Novak is a Ph.D. student in economics and a research assistant at the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University. His research falls in the realms of comparative institutional analysis and entangled political economy, with a particular interest in the role which culture and assigned meanings play in people’s plans and choices. He holds and MA in philosophy, politics, and economics (including a specialization in the Austrian school of economics) from Cevro Institute, Prague. Alongside his studies, Rok has been a policy analyst and reform proponent in his roles as a regular columnist for the Slovenian central business daily Časnik Finance and as program director of Institute Libertas, a free market think tank in Slovenia.

Nicholas O'Neill is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Chicago. His dissertation examines the unique French path to industrialization through the lens of its porcelain industry in the eighteenth century, focusing on state policies and business strategies for success in an industry rooted in the reputation for taste. His research interests include comparative capitalisms, early modern Europe, and the history of economic thought, with particular emphases on mercantilism and theories of demand. His work has been supported by the Fulbright Program, the Tillman Foundation, and the École Normale Supérieure, among others.
Kunal Parker is a Professor of Law and Dean's Distinguished Scholar at the University of Miami School of Law.  He has a PhD in History from Princeton University, a JD from Harvard Law School, and a B.A. from Harvard University.  He is the author of Making Foreigners: Immigration and Citizenship Law in America (2015) and Common Law, History, and Democracy in America, 1780 - 1900: Legal Thought Before Modernism (2011).  His teaching areas include American Legal History, Property, Estates and Trusts, Constitutional Law, and Immigration and Nationality Law.
 

Zachary Rodriguez is a 2nd year PhD student in economics at West Virginia University. He has earned a MA in Theology from Boston University and a MBA from St. Bonaventure University. His research focus is development economics, and specifically the spillover effects of development interventions on cooperation and social norms. Zach is the founder of Embrace It Africa (EIA), a nonprofit organization working to encourage sustainable community growth in southern Uganda. EIA enacts its mission through economic development, public health, access to education initiatives.

Sam Schmitt is a PhD student in political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Sam studies political theory, focusing on questions of citizenship, religion, and civil society. In addition to studying political science, Sam holds a MA in philosophy from Bowling Green State University where he focused on moral and political philosophy. The discipline of political theory is shot through with excellent research on the history of political thought; Sam takes this interest seriously alongside the history of economic thought taught at HoPE's summer Institute. Outside of his academic interests Sam is an avid listener of funk, jazz, bluegrass, and classical music, enthusiastic if inadequate jogger, and a fortunate friend and husband.

J. R. Scott is a PhD student studying financial economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His research interests span the fields of empirical asset pricing, macro-finance, and financial intermediation. He received his B.S. in economics and mathematics at the University of Southern California.

Sarah Small is a PhD candidate in economics at Colorado State University and a Feminist Economics Fellow. She is also an instructor at Colorado State University and has taught courses in introductory micro and macro economics a well as courses on gender and the economy. Sarah’s primary research interests include feminist economics, history of economic thought, political economy, and public economics. Sarah holds an MA in economics from Colorado State University and a BA in economics from Assumption College. At the Summer Institute, Sarah hopes to learn more about incorporating economic history into introductory economics courses and to discuss the texts with fellow participants. 
Tracy Stobbe is an associate professor at Trinity Western University (in British Columbia, Canada).  She earned her PhD in economics from the University of Victoria (Canada) and her masters degree in public policy from the University of California Berkeley.  When not teaching statistics and principles-level economics courses to business students, she is keen to teach the history of economic thought.  She is attending the summer institute to more deeply investigate several topics and to share ideas about teaching in this area.   In her free time, she enjoys classical music (and plays the viola), reading, learning German, and going for walks. 
 

Justin Tosi is an assistant professor of philosophy at Texas Tech University. He taught previously at Georgetown University and the University of Michigan. He specializes in social, political, moral, and legal philosophy, and writes mainly about state legitimacy, special obligations, and social morality. His work has appeared in Philosophy & Public Affairs, Legal Theory, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, and other venues. His first book, Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk (co-authored with Brandon Warmke), is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
Roel Visser is a 2019 HOPE Center fellow. He is a PhD student at the University of Bielefeld.
 
Yue Xiao is a 2018-19 HOPE Center fellow researching the connection between John Stuart Mill and China. For more on Yue, please see her HOPE Center profile.