About
Articles
Monographs
Working Papers
Reviews
Archive
Contact
 
 

Scott Sumner in Australia

Scott Sumner will be in Australia next month as a guest of the Centre for Independent Studies. He will be attending our Consilium conference on the Gold Coast, but will also be doing a seminar with the Economic Society of Australia (NSW) in Sydney.

Scott has written an article in the latest issue of our journal Policy, ‘A New View of the Great Recession.’ It is an excellent introduction to some of the ideas informing what Lars Christensen has dubbed ‘the new market monetarism.’

I’m also pleased to read that Scott will be attending next year’s Mont Pelerin Society meeting, where he will be on a panel on The Coming Threat of Inflation. As Scott notes on his blog:

The 500 classical liberals in the audience will be surprised to learn that the threat is that inflation will be too low over the next 5 years.

In fact, MPS includes quite a few market monetarists, especially among the younger members (I’m young by MPS standards!) This should not be surprising since the new market monetarism is firmly in the orthodox monetarist tradition of Milton Friedman, one of the Society’s founding members. Unfortunately, many of the older MPS members are still wedded to fighting the inflation battles of the 1970s. They need to move on!

posted on 22 July 2013 by skirchner in Classical Liberalism, Economics, Monetary Policy

(2) Comments | Permalink | Main

| More

CIS Liberty & Society Student Conference

CIS is seeking applications for its Liberty & Society Student Conference:

Liberty and Society is a unique conference program for undergraduates, postgraduates and recent graduates over the age of 18 who live in Australia, New Zealand or the South Pacific. The goal of the Liberty and Society conferences is to create an intellectual environment where ideas and opinions about what makes a free society can be discussed, argued and learnt.

Liberty and Society is for young people who may be questioning the standard answers they are getting regarding social, political and economic issues. You may not see yourself as a fitting into the ‘left’ or ‘right’ mould. This is an opportunity to consider the classical liberal perspective. Classical liberalism promotes individual freedom, private property, limited government and free trade.

Students from every Australian state and New Zealand attend. Formal and informal discussions on economics, political thought, law and social policy dominated the weekend interspersed with arguments about foreign policy, education and politics. Generous scholarships allow everyone to apply.

Join us for an intellectual experience that may change the way you think about the world.

posted on 17 August 2011 by skirchner in Classical Liberalism

(0) Comments | Permalink | Main

| More

Is There a Free Market Economist in the House?

In this week’s Ideas@TheCentre, I anticipate the results of a survey of the policy views of the members of the Economics Society of Australia, drawing on similar surveys of US economists by Dan Klein, Charlotta Stern and Robert Whaples.

posted on 10 June 2011 by skirchner in Classical Liberalism, Economics

(0) Comments | Permalink | Main

| More

CIS End of Financial Year Appeal

You know what to do.

posted on 06 June 2011 by skirchner in Classical Liberalism

(0) Comments | Permalink | Main

| More

How (Some) Academic Economist Bloggers Are Made

Bryan Caplan on GMU faculty:

None of us discovered economics in a mainstream econ class, found it fascinating, then decided to try to ascend the academic hierarchy.  Instead, our inspiration came from libertarian books, libertarian friends, and libertarian intellectuals, plus our broader reading in philosophy, history, and the history of economic thought.  Once we fell in love with ideas, we asked, “How can I make a career out of this?”  We would have preferred to be instantly anointed as public intellectuals.  But the best realistic path, we learned, was “Become a professor of economics.”

Throw in a couple of diversions via politics and financial markets and you have my career in a nutshell.

posted on 16 February 2011 by skirchner in Classical Liberalism, Economics

(0) Comments | Permalink | Main

| More

Sealand, HavenCo, and the Rule of Law

Proto-seasteading:

The story itself is fascinating enough: it includes pirate radio, shotguns and .50-caliber machine guns, rampant copyright infringement, a Red Bull skateboarding special, perpetual motion machines, and the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of State. But its implications for the rule of law are even more remarkable.

posted on 15 February 2011 by skirchner in Classical Liberalism, Economics, Rule of Law

(0) Comments | Permalink | Main

| More

Mises Supported Fractional Reserve Banking

The bits of Mises Huerta de Soto forgot.

posted on 03 February 2011 by skirchner in Austrian School, Classical Liberalism, Economics, Monetary Policy

(0) Comments | Permalink | Main

| More

Think Tanks Work

Giving money to think tanks yields results:

Our results suggest that each additional dollar of state-based free market think tank spending per 1000 residents reduces overall state-level government spending by $1.55 per capita… We find a positive relationship between state-based free market think tank spending and citizens’ preference for market-oriented economic policy.

So donate already. You know you want to.

posted on 25 November 2010 by skirchner in Classical Liberalism, Think Tanks

(0) Comments | Permalink | Main

| More

Behavioural Economics at the Mont Pelerin Society

Blogging will be even lighter than usual next week, as I will be attending the Mont Pelerin Society General Meeting in Sydney. I will be the lead discussant for a paper by Doug Ginsburg and Joshua Wright, ‘Behavioural Economics, Law and Liberty’. The paper should be topical, with the Nobel prize for economics announced next week and behaviouralists currently leading the field of potential winners at iPredict. While Richard Thaler would be a deserving recipient, it would be unfortunate if Robert Shiller were a co-recipient (indeed, it would be a tacit admission that Shiller should not win in his own right). Oddly enough, I was on the same Sydney-New York flight as Shiller when I went to the MPS special meeting in February last year, but did not spot him until after we had landed. Shiller can thank Qantas for not putting me next to him for 22 hours (that would have been an interesting conversation).

posted on 08 October 2010 by skirchner in Classical Liberalism, Economics

(0) Comments | Permalink | Main

| More

Kevin Rudd as Neo-Liberal

My CIS colleague, Oliver Hartwich, in Neo-Liberalism: The Genesis of a Political Swear Word, demonstrates that when Kevin Rudd attacks neo-liberalism, he is unconsciously attacking his own intellectual heritage and heroes.

posted on 21 May 2009 by skirchner in Classical Liberalism

(0) Comments | Permalink | Main

| More

Follow insteconomics on Twitter