|Peter Boettke|
One of the great joys of working at GMU is that I can go to work everyday with the full knowledge that my co-workers share with me a passion for teaching economics and communicating the basic teachings of economics to the wide public rather than merely seeking the applause of our peers in the scientific community of economists. Obviously, as professional economists we want to make as big an impact as we can in the scientific and scholarly communities. GMU, afterall, is a research university, and we are a group of very active researchers publishing books with top university presses, and articles in the leading general journals, and the specialized journals of our chosen fields. But we also are a group of economists dedicated to a wider public engagement -- from the traditional opinion editorial to daily blogs; from traditional electronic media such as radio and TV to modern instruments of social media such as podcasts and twitter feeds; from public lectures on campuses to testimony on Capitol Hill; and, from interdisciplinary scholarship to textbook writing. Just browse the CVs of my colleagues past and present at GMU.
My close colleague Don Boudreaux is a prime example. I have known Don since the mid-1980s and his
enthusiasm for economics as a discipline has been contagious. Don has published articles in general journals in economics as well as field journals and law reviews, but he has also published widely in newspapers and magazine across the country. He is an outstanding teacher of basic economics and one of those teachers that generates majors. He knows how to give a great public lecture to general audiences, and he does fantastic in video presentations at online resources such as Marginal Revolution University and Learn Liberty. Don has mastered the art of summarizing basic economics in the most minimalist presentation possible with his letters to the editors, and this can also been seen daily in his commentary at Cafe Hayek.
Don is able to take complicated economic arguments and boil them down to the essential point without losing the subtle brilliance of the idea. It is a great skill to possess. Another of my very talented colleagues -- Tyler Cowen -- once told me that there were great returns to pithiness. I never learned the lesson unfortunately, but Tyler and Don have and the market has rewarded them accordingly. Several years ago now Don had a great conversation with Russ Roberts on Reading Hayek which reflects his great skill at taking complicated and often confusing ideas and making them clear and straightforward points that possess critical importance for understanding the world.
Don's understanding of the essentials of Hayek's contributions to economic understanding and its implications for social philosophy and his considerable skills at exposition are on full display in his new monograph The Essential Hayek. The book is a great introduction to Hayek for beginners and the website and instructional videos associated with it are simply fantastic.
Please share the website with all your colleagues to share with their students. This is a GREAT teaching resource that the Fraser Institute has produced and Don was the perfect teacher for this project.
I congratulate Don and Fraser for producing The Essential Hayek.
Hear! Hear!
Posted by: Roger Koppl | June 15, 2015 at 09:20 AM