|Peter Boettke|
The Association of Private Enterprise Education (APEE) is proud to announce that the Adam Smith Award winner for 2013 will be William Easterly of New York University. APEE describes the award as follows:
"The Adam Smith Award is the highest honor bestowed by The Association of Private Enterprise Education. It is given to recognize an individual who has made a sustained and lasting contribution to the perpetuation of the ideals of a free market economy as first laid out in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. The recipient of this award must be an individual who has acquired an international reputation as an eloquent scholar and advocate of free enterprise and the system of entrepreneurship which underlies it. In searching for a recipient, APEE looks for someone who through their writing, speaking, and professional life, has focused attention upon the fundamental principles which are the bulwark of our organization."
Previous award winners include Nobel Prize winners James Buchanan, Vernon Smith, Douglass North, and Elinor Ostrom, and other leading economic thinkers such as Armen Alchian, Robert Barro, Harold Demsetz, Allan Meltzer, and Gordon Tullock.
With works such as The Elusive Quest for Growth and The White Man's Burden, Easterly has significantly changed the terms of the debate over the role of government and foreign aid in addressing the problems of poverty and underdevelopment. It is important to stress, however, that Easterly's work is not just a critique of efforts at development planning due to perverse incentives, bureaucratic bottlenecks, and errors in economic calculation, but also contains a deep understanding of the role of the entrepreneurial market process in lifting individuals out of poverty and producing a social order of freedom, dignity, peace, and prosperity. Economic development follows from a society of free and responsible individuals; who participate in a market economy based on profit and loss; who participate in a political regime governed by principle, not privilege; and live in a society that exhibits neither discrimination nor dominion. Easterly is one of the clearest voices in economics today for how the free enterprise system is a catalyst for human betterment.
Easterly will be honored on Sunday, April 14th, 2013 at the opening banquet of the annual meetings of APEE. This years conference will be held at the Sheraton-Maui. Here is the call for papers, please consider submitting a paper and/or a panel for the meetings.
Excellent choice.
Posted by: Lawrence H. White | July 19, 2012 at 07:53 PM
I hope all CP readers consider attending the APEE meetings and presenting papers. They are productive and collegial meetings. This year's location is pretty nice.
Posted by: Jerry O'Driscoll | July 21, 2012 at 09:53 PM