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Sandra Peart is a Distinguished Professor of Leadership Studies and the President of the Jepson Scholars Foundation at the University of Richmond, as well as a coauthor of Towards an Economics of Natural Equals: A Documentary History of the Early Virginia School, with David Levy. She is also a distinguished fellow of the history of economics society.

Today we talk about the importance of humility in discussing important ideas in addition to the importance of asking the right questions, ethical questions. She leads us through the intellectual landscape of the 60s, post World War II, and the birth of the Virginia School of Economics, which was intent on asking important questions about humanity and the nature of equality. We talk about James Buchanan, Warren Nutter, Gordon Tullock, and their influences such as Adam Smith and Frank Knight. We talk about how public choice and experimental economics both critique and improve the field of economics.

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Daniel Di Martino is a PhD candidate in Economics at Columbia University and a graduate fellow at the Manhattan Institute—where he focuses on high-skill immigration policy. He also founded the Dissident Project to teach high school students about the evils of socialist regimes.

Today we talk about his life in Venezuela and the economic realities he faced growing up, particularly inflation and shortages. He explains how poor institutions, even democratically elected ones, can turn a trusting and prosperous society into a mistrusting and thieving one. (Watch out ladies, they’ll even steal the hair from your head). We talk about the incentives involved in immigration policy and the immigration situation in places like New York City and Miami today.


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• Bruce Bueno de Mesquita on Democracies and Dictatorship, an EconTalk podcast.
• Simeon Djankov and Matt Warner on the Doing Business Report and Development Aid, an EconTalk podcast.
• Jim Epstein on Bitcoin, the Blockchain, and Freedom in Latin America, an EconTalk podcast.
• Edward Lopez, Socialism From the Bottom Up, a review of Powell and Lawson's Socialism Sucks, at Econlib.
• Stan Veuger on the Dutch Farmer Protests and Cannabis Legalization, a Great Antidote podcast.

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Anne Bradley is an economics professor at the Institute of World Politics and the Vice President of Academic Affairs at The Fund for American Studies. Today, we talk about the political economy of terrorism: what terrorism is, what makes a terrorist, and what the war on terror does to attempt to prevent terrorism. We talk about how economics is uniquely positioned to pose questions and find answers about this area usually dominated by those studying defense and international relations, and how the human element of economics informs her framing of the issue.


Want to explore more?

• Anne Rathbone Bradley, The Economics of al-Qaeda, at Econlib.
• Gary Shiffman on the Economics of Violence, an EconTalk podcast.
• Robert P. Murphy, Ensuring- and Insuring- Air Security, at Econlib.
• Chris Coyne on Manufacturing Militarism, a Great Antidote podcast.
• Kristi Kendall on Human Action and Inspiring Through Ideas, a Great Antidote podcast.

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