Economics Program Mason’s Best-Kept Secret

By Connect Mason Asst. News Director Rashad Mulla

Professor Peter Boettke believes George Mason University's economics department puts its best foot forward every Thursday afternoon.

About 35 people attend the weekly Workshop in Philosophy, Politics and Economics Thursdays at 1 p.m. in Enterprise Hall’s room 318, says Boettke, Deputy Director of the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy at Mason.

The workshop, started in the fall of 1998, is geared toward Ph.D. students and faculty conducting research on the intersection of philosophy, politics, economics and other fields, said Boettke, also a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center. This intertwined research is a great strength of the Mason economics department, he said.

“This is an unusual department, but it’s well-known,” said Boettke. “Our research here is more broadly conceived.”

The department brings speakers from a variety of fields and universities to speak at this weekly event. In addition to presentations by Mason economics professors Dan Klein and Russ Roberts this semester, many academics have come to speak at this workshop for years.

Some of the guests from this semester include:

• E. Glen Weyl, a Ph.D. candidate in economics at Princeton University, who spoke on January 29. His speech was titled, Whose rights?: A critique of individual agency as the basis of rights.
• Jared Rubin, assistant professor in the department of economics, California State University, Fullerton, who spoke on February 14 about Printing and interest restrictions in Islam and Christianity.
• Pierre Garrouste, professor of economics at the University of Paris I, spoke on March 20 about The emergence and evolution of institutions: the complementary approaches of Carl Menger and Thorstein Veblen.
• Robert Nelson, professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, who covered Scholasticism vs. pietism: The battle for the soul of economics on April 3 .

“You’re hearing the best people in the world on these topics,” said Boettke. “We have broad-ranging intellectual dialogue in our workshops.”

Boettke believes the wide variety of speakers brings an air of freshness to the department, which includes two Nobel Prize winners, distinguished professors Vernon L. Smith and James M. Buchanan, and research endeavors in previously unheard of fields.

Read the minutes of this semester’s speeches and the upcoming speakers here. Browse the archives of the workshop’s history here.