The French Connection Redux

I just returned from Paris, where I presented two research seminars on Monday (October 16th) at the Maison des Sciences Economiques at the University of of Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne.  I gave my paper (co-authored with Pete and Chris) "Comparative Historical Political Economy: An Old Research Program for a Modern Age" to the 'Midis de philosophie et d'ecomie' (the research seminar on the philosophy and methodology of economics) and my paper (co-authored with Fred) on "The Use of Knowledge Within Economics" to the Austrian Economics Seminar.

My gracious host for the day was Pierre Garrouste, but I was also very glad to meet and interact with Thierry Aimar (a very energetic force for Austrian economics in France), Gregory Zwirn (who I have great expectations for as a scholar of economic philosophy), Elodie Bertrand (author of a new challenging study on the Coase lighthouse story) and Andre Lapidus (who provided excellent comments/criticisms on the first paper) as well as several others (I apologize for not naminng you) who were uniformally intellectually curious, and engaging.  I had a wonderful visit and have a very positive impression of the environment there for economists who want to think seriously about the foundations of the discipline and also the historical roots of the discipline.

I know that the French academy is a tough environment for those interested in philosophy, methodology, history of thought let alone Austrian economics.  The entire centralized structure of the academy in France cuts against the sort of free thought and free movement of intellectuals that would be conducive to pursuit of ideas wherever that might take you (including in the Austrian tradition).  There are great pressures to conform to the mainstream (high mathematical models in this instance).  But the individuals at University of Paris have a group of intelligent and enthuisastic scholars in the philosophy, methodology, and history of economics (and I should also add New Institutionalism of organizations).

Thanks to Pierre and everyone for making my visit enjoyable and rewarding.

I have written about my "French connection" before in the pre-cursor to this blog in August 2003.  I have been on 3 dissertation committees in France and all 3 of the individuals are doing quite well in the US intellectual scene: Frederic Sautet (University of Paris IX) is working with me at Mercatus now and continues to work on entrepreneurship, theory of the firm, and tax policy (he had a nice piece in Forbes this past summer), Veronique de Rugy (University of Paris I) has established herself as a top-flight policy analyst at the American Enterprise Institute and works in the areas of tax competition, and the budgetary insanity of DHS, etc., and finally Alex Padilla (University of Aix-en-Province) is currently teaching at Metropolitan State University and has a potential block-buster of a project on self-enforcement (I will let you email Alex about the application he is using, but a hint --- it gets an X-rating rather than G-rating).

Comments

[Neelkant]

The Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines has done much to promote Austrian thought in France. It has published Special Issues on the occasion of the centenary of Hayek's birth or to honor Israel Kirzner's retirement from NYU - to name only these two events....

[Neelkant]

During 14 years, it has published several distinguished scholars including Israel Kirzner, James Buchanan, Dwight Lee, Mario Rizzo, Bill Butos, Gordon Tullock, David Harper, Viktor Vanberg, Ulrich Witt, Peter Aranson, Bruno Frey, Pascal Salin, Jo Salerno, Bruce Benson, Roy Cordato, Gary Becker, etc., to name a few...