Dr. Peter Boettke ’83
Grove City College alumnus and renowned economist Dr. Peter Boettke ’83 will deliver the keynote Ludwig von Mises Memorial Lecture at this year’s Austrian Student Scholars Conference on campus.
One of the country’s leading Austrian economists, Boettke is a professor of economics and philosophy and director of the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. The Wall Street Journal described him as “the intellectual standard-bearer for the Austrian school of economics that opposes government intervention in markets and decries federal spending to prop up demand during times of crisis.”
Boettke will discuss “Capitalism, Socialism and Our Future” during his keynote lecture at 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 25 in Sticht Lecture Hall in the Staley Hall of Arts and Letters on campus.
Coordinated by the College’s Department of Economics, the annual Austrian Student Scholars Conference offers undergraduates the opportunity to present their work for review by their peers and leading Austrian School scholars. Students from Grove City College, George Mason University, Cornerstone College and Brazil’s Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais will present papers on a variety of topics. The top three papers will be selected for Thomas E. Woods awards and cash prizes.
The conference promotes an approach that logically examines human action to reach universal economic truths as espoused by giants in the field such as Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard and Hans Sennholz, a champion of the school who taught economics at Grove City College for more than three decades.
In addition to Boettke, scholars will hear from Dr. Jonathan Newman, associate professor of economics at Bryan College. Newman will deliver the Hans Sennholz Memorial Lecture on “Crisis and Hydra: The Ratchet Effect in Government Control over Money and Banking” at 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 24 in Sticht Lecture Hall.
“The keynote lectures at this year’s ASSC feature a rising star just beginning to carve out his place and a seasoned veteran who has cut a huge swath in Austrian economics,” said Dr. Jeffrey Herbener, department chair and professor of Economics at Grove City College.
Newman, a Mises Institute award winner and graduate school instructor, is building an Austrian program at Bryan College, Herbener said. His research focuses on Austrian economics, inflation and business cycles, and the history of economic thought.
“Peter Boettke has dedicated his long and productive career to advancing a mainline approach in economics and placing Austrian economics dead center within it,” Herbener said of the Mises’ lecturer. “It was Dr. Sennholz who put Peter on his path as an undergraduate economics major at Grove City College.”
Boettke is a lauded scholar, teacher, researcher, and writer whose most recent book is “F. A. Hayek: Economics, Political Economy and Social Philosophy.” He is dedicated to cultivating enthusiasm for the economic way of thinking and the importance of economic ideas in future generations of scholars and citizens. Among many rewards and honors, he received the Grove City College Alumni Association’s Jack Kennedy Award for Alumni Achievement in 2005.
It is fitting that the conference is held at Grove City College, which is known as the world’s leading undergraduate institution for the study of Austrian School economics. The tradition dates to 1956, when Sennholz, a young protégé of Mises, the dean of Austrian School economists, was hired to head the economics department. Thousands of students were introduced to the Austrian School by Sennholz. Since 1978, the College has been the permanent home of Mises’ papers and the 20,000-page archive has been the source of four books of his previously unpublished manuscripts.
The conference is free and open to the public. For schedule details, visit austrianstudentconference.com. Both keynote lectures will be livestreamed at gcc.edu/livestream.
For more about the Department of Economics at Grove City College, visit gcc.edu/econ.