Events

Lecture Series (Spring 2022)

  • Speaker: Art Carden, Professor of Economics, Samford University

    Date: February 4, 2022

    Lecture 1: “Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich”
    Time: 10:10 am - 11:00 am
    Location: Burruss Building 151

    Lecture 2: “Waltonomics: Walmart and Society”
    Time: 11:15 am - 12:05 am
    Location: Burruss Building 151

    Bio: Art Carden is a professor of economics at Samford University’s Brock School of Business. He is also a senior fellow with the American Institute for Economic Research and the Fraser Institute; a research fellow with the Independent Institute; a senior fellow with the Beacon Center of Tennessee; a senior research fellow with the Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics; and co-editor of the Southern Economic Journal. His research on mass-market retailers, economic history, and the history of economic ideas has appeared in journals like the Southern Economic Journal, Journal of Urban Economics, Public Choice, and Contemporary Economic Policy. He is a contributor to Forbes.com, and his commentaries and other articles have appeared in USA Today, Productive!, Black Belt, and many other outlets. He earned a B.S. and M.A. from the University of Alabama and an A.M. and Ph.D. from Washington University in Saint Louis. Before joining the faculty at Samford, Carden taught economics at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. His first book, coauthored with Deirdre McCloskey and titled Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World, published by the University of Chicago Press, is available to purchase on Amazon. He lives in Birmingham with his wife and three children.

  • Speaker: Stergios Skaperdas, Professor of Economics, University of California, Irvine

    Date: February 9, 2022

    Lecture 1: “Myths of Self-Deceptions about the Greek Debt Crisis” (co-sponsored with Year of Greece)
    Time: 10:10 am - 11:00 am
    Location: TBD

    Lecture 2: “Why is there Conflict?”
    Time: 11:15 am - 12:05 pm
    Location: Burruss Building 151

    Bio: Stergios Skaperdas is professor of economics and holds the Clifford S. Heinz Chair (on the economics of peace) at the University of California, Irvine. In July 2016 he was appointed director of the Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies. His research examines circumstances in which individuals and groups can make a living not just by producing and trading but also by taking—appropriating—the production of others. With that basic trade-off between production and appropriation at its core, Skaperdas has developed a theoretical framework that allows the study of a variety of economic and political problems, including those of organized crime, the emergence of states and governance, civil wars, and other forms of domestic conflict, as well as the effects of globalization in the presence of insecurity. His research has been published in a variety of economics and political science journals, including the American Economic Review, the American Political Science Review, Economic Journal, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, the Journal of Economic Theory, and the Journal of International Economics. He received a BA in economics from Reed College and an MA and PhD, also in economics, from the Johns Hopkins University.

  • Speaker: Jonathan Looney, Director of Relationship Management, South Region, Sallie Mae

    Date: February 18, 2022

    Lecture 1: “Smart Money Management”
    Time: 10:10 am - 11:00 am
    Location: Burruss Building 151

    Lecture 2: “Responsible Repayment Strategies”
    Time: 11:15 am - 12:05 pm
    Location: TBD

  • Speaker: Greg Mankiw, Professor of Economics, Harvard University

    Date: March 22, 2022 (Virtual)

    Lecture: “Macroeconomic Policy in a Time of Low Interest Rates”
    Time: 9:30 am - 10:30 am

    Bio: N. Gregory Mankiw is the Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics at Harvard University. As a student, he studied economics at Princeton University and MIT. As a teacher, he has taught macroeconomics, microeconomics, statistics, and principles of economics. He even spent one summer long ago as a sailing instructor on Long Beach Island.

    Professor Mankiw is a prolific writer and a regular participant in academic and policy debates. His research includes work on price adjustment, consumer behavior, financial markets, monetary and fiscal policy, and economic growth. His published articles have appeared in academic journals, such as the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and Quarterly Journal of Economics, and in more widely accessible forums, such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.

    He has written two popular textbooks—the intermediate-level textbook Macroeconomics (Worth Publishers) and the introductory textbook Principles of Economics (Cengage Learning). Principles of Economics has sold over two million copies and has been translated into twenty languages.

    In addition to his teaching, research, and writing, Professor Mankiw has been a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, an adviser to the Congressional Budget Office and the Federal Reserve Banks of Boston and New York, and a member of the ETS test development committee for the advanced placement exam in economics. From 2003 to 2005 he served as Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers.

    Professor Mankiw lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with his wife, three children, and their border terrier, Tobin.

Symposia (Spring 2022)

  • Date: March 25, 2022

    Featuring a Keynote by Kenneth West, Director of Julie Plant Grainger Institute for Economic Research at University of Wisconsin

    • Session I: (Keynote): 9:05 am - 9:55 am
    • Session II: 10:10 am - 11:00 am
    • Session III: 11:15 am - 12:05 pm

    Location: TBD

    Bio: Kenneth West is the John D. MacArthur and Ragnar Frisch Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Director of the Julie Plant Grainger Institute for Economic Research. West received a B.A. in Economics and Mathematics from Wesleyan University in 1973 and a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983. He taught at Princeton University from 1983 to 1988 before coming to the University of Wisconsin in 1988. He has held Visiting Scholar positions at several central banks and at several branches of the U.S. Federal Reserve System. West is currently co-editor of the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, and has previously served as co-editor of the American Economic Review. He has published widely in the fields of macroeconomics, finance, international economics and econometrics. Administrative positions include two terms as Chair of the Economics Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Research honors include the John M. Stauffer National Fellowship in Public Policy at the Hoover Institution, Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, Fellow of the Econometric Society, Abe Fellowship and Fellow of the International Association for Applied Econometrics. Teaching honors at the University of Wisconsin include Distinguished Honors Faculty and Best Teacher in the Economics Ph. D. Program.

    With talks by:
    Viral Acharya, Professor of Economics, New York University
    Martin Gervais, Alumni Board Distinguished Professor, University of Georgia
    Kathryn Holston, World Bank Economist

  • Date: April 26, 2022

    Featuring a Keynote by John Tomasi, President of Heterodox Academy

    • Session I: 9:30 am - 10:45 am
    • Session II: (Keynote): 11:00 am - 12:05 pm
    • Session III: (Q&A): 11:50 am - 12:15 pm
    • Film Screening: “The Real Adam Smith: Morality and Markets” 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm

    Location: TBD

    Bio: Tomasi earned his bachelor’s degree from Colby College and did his graduate work in political philosophy at the University of Arizona (M.A.) and Oxford University (B.Phil., D.Phil.). He has held positions at the University Center for Human Values at Princeton, the Department of Philosophy at Stanford, and the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard.

    Tomasi is the author of Liberalism Beyond Justice: Citizens, Society and the Boundaries of Political Theory (Princeton University Press, 2001), in which he proposes a reconception of contemporary liberalism that takes the diversity of views more seriously, leading to less emphasis on the public aspect of society and developing a liberal conception of nonpublic life. Tomasi’s latest book, Free Market Fairness (Princeton University Press, 2012), draws simultaneously on moral insights from defenders of economic liberty such as F. A. Hayek and advocates of social justice such as John Rawls. Free market fairness is a new theory of liberal justice, committed to both limited government and the material betterment of the poor.

    With talks by:
    Michael Patrono, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Kennesaw State University
    Virgil Storr, Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
    Sarah Estelle, Associate Professor of Economics, Hope College

Film Screenings (Spring 2022)

  • Date: February 25, 2022

    Time: 10:10 am - 11:00 am
    Location: Burruss Building 151

    Description: Thomas Sowell: Common Sense in a Senseless World traces Sowell’s journey from humble beginnings to the Hoover Institution, becoming one of our era’s most controversial economists, political philosophers, and prolific authors. Hosted by Jason Riley, a member of The Wall Street Journal editorial board, the one-hour program features insights from Sowell and interviews with his close friends and associates, revealing why the intensely private Thomas Sowell is considered by many to be “one of the greatest minds of the past half-century” and “the smartest person in the room.”

  • Date: April 11, 2022

    Time: 10:10 am - 11:00 am
    Location: Burruss Building 151

    Description: Personal stories of the effect of tax exemptions, subsidies, government regulations, and bailouts - all commonly used to help big business - are presented in the new documentary, Corporate Welfare: Where's the Outrage?. Hosted by Free To Choose Media Executive Editor and Cato Senior Fellow Johan Norberg, the provocative documentary examines America's system of farm subsidies, Tax Increment Financing (TIF), Big Oil subsidies, government policies, and tax breaks for big business, and offers a perspective of the 2008 financial crash from the viewpoint of a banker caught in the middle. The program takes viewers across America to talk with individuals whose lives and livelihood have been directly affected by the outrages of corporate welfare.

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