Economists, philosophers, business scholars, and political scientists from all over the world flocked to Auburn, Alabama recently for the 2015 Austrian Economics Research Conference. They came to share their own research and new ideas and to collaborate and comment on other scholars’ work. There were 140 attendees from 15 different countries, 30 US states, and 42 different colleges and universities. By the generosity of Mises Institute donors, 31 students were able to attend on scholarship, 11 of whom presented their own papers. I’m included in that last category, and so I think I can speak for the others when I express deep gratitude for this great opportunity.
I’d like to share some of my observations from the conference, but please don’t consider this a highlight reel or a judgment on the presentations that are or are not included in this limited space. Only time and an appropriate review process can tell the measure of each presenter’s contribution.
The conference started with a forum for authors of recently published books to introduce and summarize their work. Roger Garrison edited and contributed to The Elgar Companion to Hayekian Economics and presented his purposeful organization and goals for the volume that was long in the making. Adam Vass Gal spoke about his forthcoming book, Generational Poverty: An Economic Look at the Culture of the Poor. He was inspired by his experience with the Big Brothers program and discussed cultural and family characteristics associated with generational poverty.
Paper presentations for the rest of the first day were enlightening and creative, like Jingjing Wang’s presentation on the impact of entrepreneurial experience on firm performance and David Rapp’s presentation of a coauthored work with Jeffrey Herbener on a method for subjective appraisement of complex assets like firms.
The first day also featured the Lou Church Memorial Lecture by John Mueller and the Henry Hazlitt Memorial Lecture by John Tamny. Tamny, a Forbes contributor and editor of Real Clear Markets, gave a riveting talk on a variety of issues, notably the serious errors of mainstream economics in diagnosing the causes of the Great Depression and attributing the cure to Roosevelt’s New Deal and World War II. Included in a long string of increasingly hilarious yet depressing analogies was “To believe that World War II ended the Great Depression is to believe that you can grow your economy by killing your best customers around the world” and “To believe that World War II ended the Great Depression is to believe that with the US economy still relatively weak we should go out and dynamite a few American cities and pay Americans to rebuild all the wealth destroyed.” Hazlitt (and Bastiat) would be proud.
Sessions on day two of the conference covered history of thought, law and economics, business cycles, international economics, money and finance, and libertarianism. Joseph Salerno brought into the spotlight Clarence Gilbert Hoag, who wrote an underappreciated work on time preference and interest in 1914, and Carmen Dorobăț discussed the international trade consequences of monetary expansion. Per Bylund was awarded the Lawrence W. Fertig Prize in Austrian Economics and Carmen Dorobăț was awarded the O.P. Alford III Prize in Political Economy, both with well-deserved applause from all in attendance.
Patrick Byrne, the CEO of Overstock.com, gave the F.A. Hayek Memorial Lecture on day two of the conference. His talk, like Tamny’s, covered a range of topics like the corruption in Wall Street, corporate organizational strategy, security settlement, and cryptography, especially the potential for blockchain technology to turn modern finance on its head.
Later that day, Per Bylund, David Howden, Matthew McCaffrey, and Mateusz Machaj, all former Mises Institute Summer Fellows under Joseph Salerno, surprised Salerno with a collection of essays in his honor: The Next Generation of Austrian Economics: Essays in Honor of Joseph T. Salerno. The event was remarkable and touching as each one of them shared a bit about their experience working with Professor Salerno and their contribution to the book. They mentioned Salerno’s humility, humor, and notable contributions to economics in money, history of thought, and many other areas. Even Salerno’s response was strikingly humble as he attributed his inspiration and drive to his students over the years. Salerno was then installed as the inaugural Peterson-Luddy Chair in Austrian Economics, and as the previous proceedings that evening attest, Salerno is a wise choice for such an honor.
On the last day of the conference, Hans-Hermann Hoppe presented the Ludwig von Mises Memorial Lecture and William Boyes gave the Murray N. Rothbard Memorial Lecture. Hoppe, in his usual fashion, was able to keep his audience captivated while deliberating and discussing relatively abstract philosophical concepts. Boyes offered a scathing critique of contemporary mainstream economics and government interventionism.
Other sessions on day three covered fiscal and monetary policy, economic method, microeconomics, inequality, and a panel on politicized capital markets. David Howden offered a new look at money using a taxonomy for financial assets based on their redeemability across two dimensions: time and exchange value (at-par or market). Laura Davidson spoke on how important precise definitions are for economic concepts like marginal utility, money demand and supply, and interest.
Some of the papers and projects presented will surely become the cutting edge in research from the Austrian school of thought, if they haven’t already. Paper presentations and comments from colleagues are common to all academic conferences, however. What sets the AERC apart is the material shared and the attitude of those in attendance. The presenters can’t just throw a few variables together and report statistical correlations, hoping their colleagues find it curious. Austrian economics has at its core strictly causal relationships and genuine applicability to the real world, so the standard for research is much higher. The Austrian Economics Research Conference is one of those crucial steps in the research process where that standard is tested.
