F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, & Economics

06/23/2026

Student journalist Kaeden Lincoln interviews Lawrence H. White on his recent lecture at Boise State University on Adam Smith's views on private and government money.

Presents Host Kaeden Lincoln visits with Lawrence H. White, the spe...

06/22/2026

Is there a common thread in Hayek’s economics, psychology, and political theory?

Peter Boettke and M. Scott King argue Hayek's core insight is epistemic institutionalism—institutions that enable learning, knowledge generation, and social cooperation.

06/18/2026

Is there a Das Adam Smith Problem?

Adam Smith's two major works are often accused of promoting contradictory themes in human nature: noncooperative self-interest and other-regarding sympathy. However, Nobel Prize-winning economist Vernon Smith argues that no such contradiction exists if we distinguish impersonal market exchange and personal exchange:

"As can be seen in both the ethnographic record and the laboratory experiments, whether it is goods or favors that are exchanged, they bestow gains from trade that humans seek relentlessly in all social transactions. Thus, Adam Smith's single axiom, broadly interpreted, include the social exchange of goods and favors across time, as well as the simultaneous trade of goods for money or other goods, is sufficient to characterize a major portion of the human social and cultural enterprise. It explains why human nature appears to be simultaneously self-regarding and other-regarding. It may also provide an understanding of the origin and ultimate foundation of property rights."

To read Smith's article, "The Two Faces of Adam Smith," click the link below.

Vernon L. Smith, The Two Faces of Adam Smith, Southern Economic Journal, Vol. 65, No. 1 (Jul., 1998), pp. 1-19

06/17/2026

On a recent episode, John Stossel interviews Don Boudreaux on his book, "The Triumph of Economic Freedom," coauthored with former U.S. Senator Phil Gramm. They debunk myths about poverty, AI taking jobs, and the dumb ways politicians claim to “improve" the economy.

Politicians always want to “improve” our economy.But again and ag...

06/16/2026

On this episode, Peter Boettke interviews Patrick Newman on his book, "Cronyism: Liberty versus Power in Early America, 1607–1849." Newman discusses the distinction between liberty and power and offers his take on why, despite the cronyism, the US economy experienced such substantial economic growth.

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On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Peter Boettke interviews Patrick Newman on his latest book,

06/15/2026

Why shouldn’t human behavior be treated as a mechanical system? Michael Wroblewski and Peter Boettke argue for interpretive economic models, warning against importing natural-science methods into the study of social phenomena.

This paper examines Karl Mittermaier’s critique of mechanomorphism in economics, the tendency to treat human behavior as analogous to mechanical systems governed by deterministic laws. Building on Mittermaier’s early work and his later A Realist Philosophy of Economics (2023), the paper examines...

06/12/2026

When Stone Washington started his PhD program at Clemson University, he knew something was missing from his economics classes. [...] Today, Stone credits the [Bastiat] fellowship with giving him the philosophical understanding and practical tools that transformed both his research approach and his career trajectory.

Bastiat Alum Stone Washington shares his Mercatus Fellowship Story. https://loom.ly/ZB7GOKQ

06/11/2026

Ronald Coase's "Adam Smith's View of Man" (1976) offers an important corrective to reductive readings of Smith's ideas.

He clarifies that Smith never reduced human motivation to self-interest alone. Sympathy for others and our relationship with the impartial spectator both influence our behavior. However, these elements reinforce rather than contradict the case for markets. As Coase puts it:

"The market is not simply an ingenious mechanism, fueled by self-interest, for securing the co-operation of individuals in the production of goods and services. In most circumstances it is the only way in which this could be done. [...] if one is willing to accept Smith’s view of man as containing, if not the whole truth, at least a large part of it, realisation that his thought has a much broader foundation than is commonly assumed makes his argument for economic freedom more powerful and his conclusions more persuasive."

To read more about "Adam Smith's view of Man," click the link below.

Adam Smith was a great economist, perhaps the greatest that there has ever been. Today I am going to discuss his views on the nature of man. My reason…

06/10/2026

On this episode, Emily Chamlee-Wright delivers a keynote lecture at the 2025 Markets & Society conference on the precarious state of liberalism and the cultural foundations necessary to sustain a free society.

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On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Emily Chamlee-Wright delivers a keynote lecture at the 2025 Markets &

06/09/2026

"By the end, the concept of Hayek’s Bastards from the book’s title has not only moved to the background of the analysis, but that its very meaning has become ambiguous."

—Erwin Dekker reviews "Hayek’s Bastards: Race, gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right" by Quinn Slobodian

The new book by Quinn Slobodian continues his impressive research program of uncovering the intellectual roots of political and ideological currents of the contemporary neoliberal right. He first did this in The Globalists, which detailed a largely untold story of how in particular Austrian economic...