Just listened to an excellent discussion on Buchanan’s life and ideas between Don Boudreaux and Russ Roberts. They discussed two important essays by Buchanan, ‘What should economists do?’ and ‘Natural and artifactual man’, which illuminate Buchanan’s view on human nature and choice. Some personal takeaways: Listen to the podcast here.
Tag: Political economy
Book review: The Essential Adam Smith
The Essential Adam Smith by James Otteson (published 2018) is a short but insightful primer on Adam Smith and his seminal contributions to political economy. The book provides some historical details of Smith’s life and work and introduces the reader to important themes in his two-volume magnus opum, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) and The Wealth of Nations (WN)….
Are economists just calculators?
What are economists doing? What should they be doing? And how should they go about doing their job? Economists don’t often pause and reflect on the nature of their work and the problems they deal with. We economists go about building and running models to solve ‘optimisation’ problems and even predict economic events and outcomes….