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August 2005 The dog days of summer
are upon us. August is always somewhat frustrating for me.
For one, I don’t have any coaching
duties since summer league is over. Moreover, it is hard to catch
a good basketball game since AAU tournaments are over, summer
professional leagues are over, college seasons haven’t
started, etc. So I watch European League basketball on NBA.TV
or court classics. Also, August is frustrating because I have
to rush to finish up summer commitments that I didn’t quite
finish as I had scheduled in June and July. I have to get ready
for the next academic year, but the next academic year is not
here yet. So lots of planning and little immediate results. And
yet because I have so many things to juggle, I cannot get away
for one last vacation either. Still this August I decided, in collaboration with Chris Coyne
and Peter Leeson, to start a new blog --- The
Austrian Economists. I have resisted doing a blog --- in
fact this page was my concession to the blogosphere. I will try
to keep up with this page with monthly updates, but for anyone
interested in more focused discussion of my interest in Austrian
economics and classical liberal political economy they should
follow the discussions at The Austrian Economists.
Ludwig von Mises, The Free Market and Its Enemies.
Wonderful transcription of Mises’s lectures at FEE in the
1950s ---- very good material in there on methodology, economic
science and public policy. William Easterly, The
White Man’s Burden: Why the
West’s Big Plans to Save the Rest Fail to Do Good,
manuscript. ****This is a blockbuster of a book and it couldn’t
have come at a better time with the popular ascendancy of Jeff
Sachs and his rather ridiculous The End of Poverty****
July 2005 July started with a trip back home to NJ. We rented a house
in Pt. Pleasant
Beach, NJ for the week around the 4 th of July. During the
week we not only went to the beach in Point and also at Seaside,
but were able to enjoy the following NJ summer traditions:
Visiting family in both
Toms River (my family) and Ocean Township (Rosemary’s)
is always the main point of the trips north. But Rosemary and
I also simply love the NJ Shore and miss it tremendously, especially
the ocean. I remain convinced that the finest university for
me to teach at would be Oxford University placed along the
NJ shore. Hopefully, Monmouth
University will someday become that place and they will want
to hire a political economist such as myself so that Rosemary
and I can move back to the NJ Shore. Until that time, life in
landlocked Fairfax seems to be our fate. I made a radio appearance on Voice
of America’s program “Straight Talk Africa”.
I haven’t been on the radio in many years and this was
an unusual experience in that we did the interview in-studio
rather than over the phone and the show was also shown over
the internet in streaming video. My research team at Mercatus
has won a grant from the Templeton Foundation for Enterprise
Africa and two of my dissertation students have visited Africa
and written PhD thesis work on puzzles in Africa – Scott
Beaulier and Susan
Anderson. The Austrian Economics Seminar at The
Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington-on-Hudson,
NY was held July 24-30. This was the first time I have been
to FEE since the Ebeling’s have taken over, and I must
say I was completely enamored with what they have done. As
a young student at Grove City College I remember vividly making
the trip across the state of PA to attend my first FEE seminar
in 1980. The wonderful staff at FEE made me feel so welcome
and FEE quickly became an intellectual home for me. I have
visited FEE and lectured at FEE several times since that first
visit 25 years ago. This visit was the first time that I had
the same feel about the place that I had then. Anna Ebeling
greats her guests and welcomes them with great enthusiasm,
and Richard is the master historian of the liberal tradition
and of the Austrian School of Economics. The two of them have
done a remarkable job in the short time they have been in charge
and the treasures they have uncovered in terms of pictures
and memorabilia from Leonard Read, Henry Hazlitt and Ludwig
von Mises is just phenomenal. I wish them all the best in this
endeavor to educate the young on the first-princples of liberty
and basic economics. When I was watching Richard speak I got
goose bumps remembering Leonard Read demonstrating with the
Lamp of Liberty how the flame of truth never burns out and
how the remnant through self-education and effective communication
can make sure that the flame grows. Everyone should send their
students to FEE, and better yet if you can get them to do so,
get your children to make a sojourn to FEE and be enlightened
by the Ebelings.
June 2005 Most of June was spent with my Fairfax Stars AAU team. Our team had a successful spring --- we made the semi-finals of 2 tournaments and the quarterfinals of 2 others. We ended up ranked 9 th in VA for YBOA teams, though we couldn’t get over the hump at the state championship to qualify for the nationals. During the year we lost to the 4 th ranked team in VA in AAU by 4 points twice, and in our last tournament of the season we lost to the state champions by 2 in overtime. I hope the boys learned a lot and had fun competing against some great competition and that they will all make a very successful transition to high school basketball next year.
I spoke at the Institute for Humane Studies Social
Change Graduate Student Workshop at U VA . The students
at the workshop are very smart and often times very dedicated
so I very much enjoy making this annual visit. I used to lecture
at 3 Institute for Humane Studies summer seminars for the entire
week during most of the 1990s. I think the programs that the
Institute runs are first-rate and extremely important for the
future of libertarian scholarship and the advancement of that
cause in the world. I now don’t stay for week long visit
but instead go for a lecture or two. I did stay for a week
with the Koch Summer Fellows this year, and I was supposed
to lecture at the conference at Duke as well, but my flight
got cancelled. Like FEE, the Institute for Humane Studies is
a grand organization of classical liberalism and libertarianism
and the people who have dedicated their lives to helping young
people must be commending for the wonderful work they are doing.
May 2005 I have been very fortunate as a teacher of economics throughout my career. Students seemed to relate to me right from the start of my career and I have been able to help students pursue careers in law, economics and public policy. Former undergraduate students from Oakland University, New York University, and Manhattan College have gone on to earn their PhDs in economics and pursue successful careers in either academia, public sector, or private sector. Anyone who has taught will tell you that seeing these students go on and achieve is the greatest reward. One of my NYU students – Julia Kupchik, for example, has since earned her MBA from Columbia and is now a partner at JP Morgan. Others work in the area of public policy. I keep special tabs, as you might expect, on the students who decide to pursue careers as academics. Since coming to GMU, my focus has been almost exclusively on graduate education and my contact with undergraduates has been minimal. However, one of the greatest thrills for me is that Chris Coyne was an undergraduate student of mine at Manhattan College when I taught there for 1 year in the late 1990s and is graduating with his PhD at GMU. I first met Peter Leeson when he was a sophomore in college and he is also graduating this term. This graduation is bitter sweet in that both Chris and Pete will be graduating and I am thrilled to see them advance to the next level --- Chris is heading off to Hampden-Sydney College and Pete is heading off to West Virginia University --- but I am also going to be sad to see them leave GMU. I have worked very closely with Chris and Pete and seen them develop as both young men and as scholars over the years. I have very high expectations for both of them.
I no longer have the fan allegiance in professional basketball that I had as a kid watching the great NY Knick teams of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Instead, I just like the game especially when it is played right. I root for teams, but cheer for individual players who exhibit what I consider to have great fundamentals and high basketball IQ. One of my favorite players currently in the NBA is Kirk Heinrich --- my list of most fundamentally sound players currently in the NBA would include Tim Duncan, Dwayne Wade, Steve Nash, Richard Hamilton, and Mike Bibby. When I had a chance to attend the 6 th game in the Wizards playoff series with the Bulls I was rooting for the Wizards to win, but cheering for Heinrich to play a great game. Despite the costly last second turnover by Heinrich that led to the winning basket I actually saw what I wanted. Heinrich scored 22 points to lead the Bulls and the Wizards behind their big 3 of Arenas, Jamison, and Hughes won and moved on to the second round of the playoffs.
The Wizards have not won a playoff series in 23 years. Before getting to the playoff series clinching game, the Wizards needed some last second heroics from guard Gilbert Arenas to fend off the Bulls after another fourth quarter collapse by the Wizards in game 5 in Chicago.
I don’t expect the
Wizards to go any further this year as Miami will most likely
put them away quickly to reach the Eastern Conference finals.
However, it has been a good year for the Wizards and hopefully
one they can build on to revitalize the franchise.
April 2005 Baseball has come back to DC. A friend was able to get tickets for the Home Opener for the Nationals and I was there. It was a great thrill as Vinny Castilla had a great game at the plate and Livan Hernandez pitched a great game (though they left him in one inning too long) as the Nationals won 5-3 over the Diamondbacks. I cannot get too emotionally tied to the Nationals --- my allegiance belongs to the Yankees. But it was great to see baseball back in DC. The Association of Private Enterprise Education held its annual meeting in Orlando, Florida. The APEE meetings have grown considerably in recent years under the leadership of individuals such as Bruce Benson, Jane Shaw and Bob Lawson. The meetings have evolved into a great “testing ground” for the graduate students from Florida State, West Virginia, and George Mason and in many instances these students have gone on to emerge as rising leaders within this professional society. Former Florida State graduate students such as Bob Lawson and Russ Sobel for example are leading intellectual lights of the association, and former George Mason student Edward Stringham is perhaps the fastest rising member in the APEE leadership.
I have always found APEE to one of the most enjoyable conferences to attend and it is not just because they have been in places such as Las Vegas, Cancun, and the Bahamas --- honestly. The meetings address research in public choice, Austrian economics and the policy relevance of these paradigms as well as addressing the best way to communicate economic ideas to our students and the general public. So it was great honor for me to be awarded the Association’s Distinguished Scholar Award for 2005. Previous award winners include scholars such as Robert Higgs, Bruce Benson, James Gwartney, Rick Stroup, PJ Hill, and Bruce Yandel, among many others. The NCAA Basketball team is one of the great sporting events, if not the greatest sporting event, every year. This year it was absolutely thrilling. However, it also turned out to be my best year for prediction as I had 3 of the final four teams in my office pool, my wife’s office pool, and also I had UNC winning all the way through and in fact beating Illinois in the final.
When I was playing in HS, Sean May’s father won the College Player of the Year in 1976 as he led Indiana to an undefeated season and the national title.
Soon after the NCAA
title game, the top players from UNC --- Sean May, Raymond
Felton, Rashad McCants and Marvin Williams all declared they
were moving to the NBA. Except for Williams I don’t have high expectations for any of them at the NBA
level, though I did enjoy watching May play this year and do
wish him the best as he tries to transition to NBA play. I will
be very surprised if Rashad McCants amounts to much of a professional
player. He is no doubt talented, but he also has the weakest
understanding of the game. Felton is a good college point guard,
but he will probably have a difficult time in the NBA as well.
These 3 players were as talented entering college as any group
(I actually saw them all play in the Capitol Classic when they
were in high school), but Roy Williams had to use every ounce
of his coaching skill to deal with this group and get them to
win. McCants might actually be the worst head-case to play major
college basketball in recent years. May was the major reason
for UNC’s success this year as he committed himself to
working hard on and off the court and to the idea of playing
team basketball. BTW, MVPs of the Capitol Classic the year I
saw the UNC 3 play were May and Amare Stoudemire of the Phoenix
Suns.
March 2005 March Madness begins with the conference tournaments and among the grandest of those conference tournaments is the ACC Tournament. In 2005, the ACC Tournament moved from NC to Washington, DC and I was able to attend 3 days of the tournament, including the finals. It was a dream come true for me to watch UNC, Duke, NCS and Georgia Tech battle it out. JJ Redick was amazing, especially on Saturday and Sunday. I have been involved with the Institute for Humane Studies since my undergraduate days at Grove City College. I wrote to IHS to get information about Austrian economics and classical liberalism when I was a senior at GCC, after I was alerted to their existence by Bettina Bien Graves and some of the graduate students working with Hans Sennholz from Argentina. Walter Grinder, also at GCC graduate, was the Vice President of IHS at the time and he wrote back to me and provided me with the following: (1) copies of the Humane Studies Review issues with Richard Ebeling’s survey of Austrian economics, (2) a brochure on the newly established Austrian economic program at George Mason University run by Richard Fink --- The Center for the Study of Market Processes, and (3) information on the summer seminar on Austrian economics that IHS sponsored. I remember being so thrilled when I received that letter from Walter and learning that the Austrian community existed beyond the confines of Grove City College and also elsewhere than at NYU---- I did know about Israel Kirzner and his great work. In fact, Sanford Ikeda and Steve Thomsen were the top economics students at GCC when I first got interested in Austrian economics and they both pursued their PhD at NYU --- so in my mind if you wanted to pursue graduate study in Austrian economics you went to NYU. It was Edward Zimmerman, who introduced me to IHS and Laissez Faire Books and started to open up my intellectual universe beyond GCC and FEE. Once I became involved with IHS I never looked back. I participated in the seminars, read the materials they gave away, spent two summers as an IHS fellow, and then when I finished graduate school worked as an IHS faculty. My wife Rosemary even worked for 18 months at IHS as John Blundell’s assistant on fund raising, etc. I cannot imagine my professional life without the Institute for Humane Studies and all that its leadership --- from Leonard Liggio and Walter Grinder to Marty Zupan today --- has given me in terms of opportunities to grow intellectually and the encouragement to pursue ideas wherever they may lead. When Marty Zupan contacted me with the information that I had been chosen to receive the Charles Koch Award for Outstanding Alumni I was absolutely thrilled and honored. Rosemary and I attended the meeting in West Palm Beach, FL and I received the award in a state of elation and in all humility. As readers of this page know, I devote a significant amount of time coaching basketball. In late February and early March we had open tryouts for my 2005 AAU team --- I coach in the Fairfax Stars AAU program. During the spring and summer we will play roughly 40 to 60 games in tournament throughout the Metro DC area and the state of Virginia with the goal of attempting to earn a spot in the national tournament. 
Fairfax Stars U14 (2005)
February 2005 During the winter I decided to coach in the Metro DC Beltway League rather than in the Fairfax County league. We got to play against some great teams and also in some famed gyms --- including Dematha HS. We went .500, which was better than expected actually, and in our losses we lost one game in overtime and another game by 4 points and another one by 6. The team had some success early on as we went to the finals of a Thanksgiving Tournament. Overall it was a rewarding season for the boys as they continue to develop their skill and knowledge of the game. The academic business is competitive and the need to continue to hire faculty which raise the average quality of the CV of the faculty is essential to keep a vibrant and thriving department and research environment. I have been on the hiring committees several times over the past few years --- including the group that brought Vernon Smith and his ICES group to GMU, and also Don Boudreaux as the new chair of the department. This past year I was on the committee again as we sought to hire at both the junior and senior level. The academic job market is a fascinating and frustrating experience. Close to 90% of the applications are ridiculously boring --- this is either a function of the personality of those attracted to academics in the first place or the incentives within the economics profession which tend to reward work that conforms to a certain style of reasoning rather than substantive contribution to our understanding of the world. The 10% that are not outright boring usually have other quirks which make you get nervous about the idea of hiring them. The secret for anyone who wants to really succeed in academics --- turn the quirk into a WOW and you will separate from the competition quickly. The process works out despite the bumps in the road. This year GMU was very lucky. At the senior level we were able to hire Dan Klein. Dan is one of the most energetic and insightful economists I know. I met Dan first when we were both in graduate school --- Dan at NYU and me at GMU --- and we have stayed in contact throughout the years. I cannot say how absolutely thrilled I am that we were able to hire Dan. At the junior level we were able to hire Ilia Rainer, who wrote his thesis with Andrei Shleifer at Harvard in the field of applied microeconomics and political economy. It is my expectation that Ilia will be a major contributor to our teaching and research program here at GMU. All in all, I cannot imagine
a better outcome from the job market for GMU this year.
January 2005 I attended the AAE meetings in Philadelphia to interview faculty and present some of my research. Many years ago I attended a session of the Association of Christian Economists to present a paper on religion and economics --- the number of people on the panel were greater than the number of people in the audience. That was then, this is now. At the meetings this year my colleague Larry Iannaccone organized the session and the room was so crowded it was standing room only. Larry’s work has garnered considerable attention over the past few years and his new Center for the Economic Study of Religion has become the focal point for professional interest in the field. |
