On this episode, Jessica Carges chats with Karol Boudreaux on female land and resource rights in Sub-Saharan Africa and their impact on economic development. Karol discusses how even when property rights are granted, formal documentation and cultural backgrounds pose challenges to control over land use, and she shares the success story of Rwanda, how the state undertook a massive land documentation effort to improve formal property rights.

Karol Boudreaux has a JD in International Law from the University of Virginia, and her work over the past two decades has focused on efforts to support improvements to land tenure and property rights for people around the world, particularly those in Sub-Saharan Africa. During her time at the Mercatus Center, she was the lead researcher for the Enterprise Africa project. She focuses on understanding links between property rights systems and development, as well as the evolution of property systems.

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On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Nava Ashraf delivers a keynote lecture at the 2024 Markets & Society conference, exploring the role of trust and institutions and focusing on female entrepreneurship in developing countries, particularly Zambia. Ashraf argues that trust, institutional fairness, and negotiation skills matter for gender equity and economic development.

Nava Ashraf is a Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she is also the Co-Director of the STICERD Psychology and Economics Programme.

Her research combines psychology and economics using both lab and field experiments to test insights from behavioral economics in the context of global development, particularly digging into health and educational services. Ashraf explores intrahousehold decision-making and gender norms in the areas of finance, fertility, and labor force participation. Her work examines thorny questions like the role of trust and power dynamics in institutions, how flourishing takes place, and the importance of imagination and creativity in human flourishing.

If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Virtual Sentiments, a podcast series from the Hayek Program, is streaming. Subscribe today and listen to season three, releasing now!

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On this episode, Jessica Carges chats with Catherine Pakaluk on her latest book, Hannah's Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth (2024). Pakaluk describes the economic consequences of dropping fertility rates, explores the reasons for why women choose to have children, explains how we can increase fertility rates, and more.

Catherine Pakaluk is the Director of Political Economy and an Associate Professor at The Catholic University of America. Her primary areas of research include economics of education and religion, family studies and demography, Catholic social thought and political economy.

If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Virtual Sentiments, a podcast series from the Hayek Program, is streaming. Subscribe today and listen to season three, releasing now!

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On this special crossover episode, Ideas of India podcast host, Shruti Rajagopalan, interviews Christopher J. Coyne on the economics of conflict and peace, the history of the U.S. security state, the US intervention in Afghanistan, domestic consequences of militarism abroad, and much more!

For the full length transcript and for more episodes like this, check out the Ideas of India podcast page.

Shruti Rajagopalan is a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center and a Fellow at the Classical Liberal Institute at New York University School of Law. She leads the India political economy research program and Emergent Ventures India at Mercatus and hosts the Ideas of India podcast.

Christopher J. Coyne is Associate Director of the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, and Director of the Initiative for the Study of a Stable Peace (ISSP).

If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Virtual Sentiments, a podcast series from the Hayek Program, is streaming. Subscribe today and listen to season three, releasing now!

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On this episode, Jordan Lofthouse chats with Zane Austin Willard about interdisciplinary scholarship and using political economy to study LGBTQ plus issues. Zane explains his academic background in economics and communication studies and discusses power dynamics, queer culture and Rupaul’s Drag Race, the paradox of visibility, and the strengths and weaknesses of polycentric governance explored through the #MeToo movement.

Zane Austin Willard is a doctoral student in the Department of Communication at the University of South Florida and Visiting Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Studies at The University of Tampa. Zane’s research and teaching interests are in critical cultural and media studies, surveillance studies, and queer theory and gender and sexuality studies. Zane is an alum of the Mercatus Don Lavoie Fellowship, Frédéric Bastiat Fellowship, and Elinor Ostrom Fellowship.

If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Virtual Sentiments, a podcast series from the Hayek Program, is streaming. Subscribe today and listen to season three, releasing now!

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On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Kwame Anthony Appiah delivers a keynote lecture at the 2023 Markets & Society conference, exploring the historical and philosophical complexities of cultural property. Using examples from classical literature, African history, and global museum debates, he critiques modern repatriation efforts for oversimplifying ownership claims. Appiah argues that the ownership and heritage of cultural artifacts are historically complex, traceable through ancestry, territory, and identity. This complexity often creates contradictions in restitution debates. Instead of a narrow focus on repatriation, Appiah advocates for a more nuanced, cosmopolitan approach to heritage and museum collections.

Kwame Anthony Appiah is a Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy, and the University Center for Human Values Emeritus at Princeton University. He earned his BA and PhD from the University of Cambridge and has since taught at numerous renowned universities, including Yale, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, Princeton, and NYU.

Appiah has published widely on literary and cultural studies with a focus on African and African American culture, ethics, and identity, including his most recent book, The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity (Liveright Publishing 2018). For his work, he has also received many awards, including the National Humanities Medal. His work on cosmopolitanism, identity, and heritage takes a nuanced and practical approach, embracing the particularities and challenges of living within a complicated social context. He also helps others understand and tackle everyday challenges through his advice column, The Ethicist at New York Times.

This lecture has been published in the Markets & Society Journal, Volume 1 Issue 1, as "Whose Heritage? Preservation, Possession, and Peoples." Learn more about the Markets & Society conference and journal here.

If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Virtual Sentiments, a podcast series from the Hayek Program, is streaming! Subscribe today and listen to season three, releasing now.

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On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Deirdre McCloskey delivers a keynote lecture at the 2022 Markets & Society conference. She argues that the "great enrichment"—a 30-fold rise in global income per capita since 1776—was driven by liberal economic ideas that champion individual freedom and equality of permission. McCloskey also critiques government intervention, emphasizing the transformative power of removing barriers to foster innovation, prosperity, and human flourishing, and more.

Deirdre McCloskey is a Distinguished Professor Emerita of Economics and of History and Professor of English and of Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago. McCloskey is also a Distinguished Affiliated Fellow with the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

She has published numerous books including Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World for All(2019) and her trilogy “The Bourgeois Era”: The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for a Commercial Society (2006), Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World (2010), and Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World (2016).

This lecture has been published in the Markets & Society Journal, Volume 1 Issue 1, as "Humanomics." Learn more about the Markets & Society conference and journal here.

If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Virtual Sentiments, a podcast series from the Hayek Program, is streaming! Subscribe today and listen to seasons one and two.

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Mikayla Novak chats with Giandomenica Becchio on her latest book, The Doctrine of the Separate Spheres in Political Economy and Economics: Gender Equality and Classical Liberalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). Together they discuss Becchio’s background and inspiration, the separated roles of men and women in the public and private spheres, and key thinkers in classical liberalism that studied feminist economics.

Giandomenica Becchio is Professor of History of Economic Thought, Methodology of Economics, and the Theory of Entrepreneurship in the Department of Economic and Social Sciences, Statistics and Mathematics, ISOMAS, at the University of Torino, Italy.

If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Virtual Sentiments, our other podcast series from the Hayek Program is streaming! Subscribe today and listen to seasons one and two, and keep an eye out for season three coming soon!

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