Past Events
Since its inception in 2013, the Political Economy Project has hosted nearly three hundred public events, making it one of the most intellectually vibrant programs at Dartmouth College. These events have cast a very wide net, involving expert speakers not only from economics, politics and philosophy, but from history, sociology, religion, psychology, biology, English, German, French, Russian and others--anyone who can shed light on the concerns of political economy, very broadly conceived.
In the early years, many of our events were "Monday Night Dinners," informal talks by local faculty over a catered meal. Below, these are indicated with an asterisk.
Past Events
2014
May 12, 2014: Greg Mankiw and Jared Bernstein, “Income Inequality: A Debate”
2015
March 9, 2015: Patrick Byrne, “Wall St. Corruption, the SEC, and Classical Liberalism”
April 14, 2015: Lucian Bebchuk and Steven Kaplan, “Are CEO’s Overpaid? A Debate”
April 29, 2015: Robert Litan, “Trillion Dollar Economists”
Oct. 12, 2015: Alex Tonelli (’06), “Breaking the Banks: Private Market Solutions to Public Problems”
Oct. 19, 2015: Bernard Avishai, “The Political Economy of Network Effects”
Oct. 20, 2015: Jonathan Katz, “Did Foreign Assistance Help Haiti After the 2010 Earthquake?”
Oct. 22, 2015: “Fight for 15: Is a Higher Minimum Wage a Good Idea?”
2016
Jan. 24, 2016: Magatte Wade: “Poverty, Inc.: Fighting Poverty is Big Business”
Jan. 25, 2016: Michael Strong and Magatte Wade, “Helping the Global Poor Through Entrepreneurship”
Feb. 18, 2016: Ilya Somin, “Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter”
April 12, 2016: Peter Wallison, “Hidden in Plain Sight: What Really Caused the World’s Worse Financial Crisis?”
April 18, 2016: Jason Sorens and Kate Schackai, “The Free State Project”
April 21, 2016: Richard Vedder, Harvey Silverglate and Rick Mills, “Why is College So Expensive?”
May 4, 2016: Jason Brennan and Debra Satz, “Are There Moral Limits to Markets?”
May 12, 2016: Kristi Olson, “The Anatomy of Envy-Freeness”
May 24, 2016: Andrew Verstein, “National Security’s Entanglement With Corporate Law”
Sept. 20, 2016: Meir Kohn, “How I Became a Libertarian”
Sept. 29, 2016: Jeremy Horowitz, Douglas Moody, and Paul Novosad, “The Ethics of Travel in Developing Countries”
Oct. 3, 2016: Wei Ying Zhang, “Logic of the Market”
Oct. 4, 2016: Peter Lindsay, “Re-envisioning Property”
Oct. 10, 2016: Josiah Ober, “The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece”
Oct. 13, 2016: Jonathan Haidt, “Three Narratives of Capitalism”
Oct. 17, 2016: Trevor Latimer, “The American Revolution: No Better Than Brexit?”
Oct. 20, 2016: “Was Slavery Essential to American Capitalism? A Debate”
2017
Jan. 11, 2017: Timur Kuran and Dirk Vandewalle, “What Killed Middle East Liberalism? A Debate”
Jan. 24, 2017: James Bartholomew, “The Failure of the Welfare State”
Jan. 30, 2017: Marjorie Rose, “What does the IMF Actually Do?”
Feb. 6, 2017: John W. Welborn, “What are the Prospects for Cryptocurrency?”
Feb. 7, 2017: John W. Welborn, “Regulatory Failure: The Case of Dodd-Frank”
Feb. 13, 2017: John Campbell, “Explaining the Rise of Trump”
Feb. 28, 2017: Joe Henrich, The Secret of Our Success
April 6, 2017: Nancy Rose, “Common Ownership and Market Concentration”
May 1, 2017: Julieta Carolina Feltrin (’17) “Argentina’s Economic Decline”
May 8, 2017: Tom Hazlett, “The Political Spectrum: The Tumultuous Liberation of Wireless Tech”
May 8, 2017: Hank Clark, “French Presidential Election Results”
May 10, 2017: Kevin Sabet and Jeffrey Miron, “Should Drugs Be Legalized? A Debate”
May 17, 2017: Peter Robinson (’79), “No ‘Tear Down This Wall’: The Story of a Speech on Its Thirtieth Anniversary”
Oct. 9, 2017: Anand Sundaram, “Corporations as the Climate Solution”
Oct. 24, 2017: Jason Brennan, “Democracy: Are We Still For It?”
Nov. 7, 2017: Meir Kohn, “Why There is No Such Thing As Capitalism (or Communism)”
2018
Jan. 29, 2018: Mark McPeek, “Charles Darwin Read Adam Smith in College”
Feb. 12, 2018: Jennifer Lind, “Developing a Great-Power Economy: The Case of China”
Feb. 20, 2018: Chris Pope and Meredith Rosenthal, “Making U.S. Health Care Cheaper and Better: A Debate”
Feb. 22, 2018: Terence Kealey, “State-Funded Science”
Apr. 9, 2018: Francesco Passarelli, “Italy’s Crazy Populist Politics: Lessons for America”
Apr. 18, 2018: Glen Weyl, “Radical Markets”
Apr. 23, 2018: Robert Doar, “Who Won the War on Poverty? A Fifty-Year Reflection on the Great Society”
Apr. 25, 2018: Richard Langlois, “Hunting the Big Five: Twenty-First Century Antitrust in Historical Perspective”
May 15, 2018: Jonathan Sigwurth (’12), “Pricing Cancer Drugs in Europe”
Sept. 27, 2018: Mark Harrison, “The Soviet Union as a Military Economy”
Oct. 1, 2018: Erika Monahan (’96), “Business and the State in Russia”
2019
Feb. 4, 2019: Chiara Cordelli, “Failed Promises in the Privatization of War”
Feb. 7, 2019: Gregory Collins, “Edmund Burke on Commercial Society
Feb. 18, 2019: Meir Kohn, “Why There is No Such Thing as Market Failure”
Feb. 25, 2019: Peter Deshazo, “Crisis in Venezuela: Why? What to Do?”
Feb. 26, 2019: Mike Munger, “The Sharing Economy and its Future”
Apr. 8, 2019: Sunmin Kim, “Race, Immigration, and Identity”
Apr. 9, 2019: Nicholas Lardy, “The State Strikes Back: The End of Economic Reform in China?”
Apr. 16, 2019: Deirdre McCloskey, “Is Capitalism Rigged?”
Apr. 23, 2019: Patrick Dineen and Aurelian Craiutu, “Has Liberalism Failed?”
Apr. 26, 2019: Glory Liu, “The Popularity of Adam Smith in America”
Apr. 29, 2019: Meir Kohn, “Why There is No Such Thing as Capitalism (or Communism)”
May 1, 2019: Dennis Rasmussen, “Adam Smith and David Hume: A Philosophic Friendship”
May 6, 2019: Paul Novosad, “Organized Crime and the Origins of the State”
May 8, 2019: Kevin Erdmann, “How a Housing Shortage Caused the Great Recession”
*May 13, 2019: Na’ama Shenhav, “DACA and the Education Decisions of Undocumented Youth”
May 20, 2019: David Blanchflower, “Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone?”
May 23, 2019: George Nash, “American Conservatism and the Challenge of Populism”
June 11, 2019: Student Sestercentennial Presentations: An Alumni Reunion Event
July 29, 2019: Yascha Mounk, “Populism and the Future of Democracy”
Aug. 6, 2019: Steven Marks, “Why the West? Information as Key to the Modern World”
Sept. 19, 2019: Ryan Hanley, “Adam Smith on Living a Better Life”
Sept. 23, 2019: Arthur Brooks, “Abundance Without Attachment”
Sept. 24, 2019: Ben Powell, “Immigration: Economic Plus or Minus?”
Sept. 24, 2019: Lord Dartmouth on Brexit—a Sestercentennial Event
Sept. 27-28, 2019: “Dartmouth and the World: A Conference on Religion and Political Economy @1769”
Sept. 30, 2019: Ben Powell, “My Adventures in ‘Socialist Country’”
Oct. 7, 2019: Adam Gopnik, “Liberal Morals and Liberal Minds”
Oct. 15, 2019: Robert Kuttner, “Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism”
Oct. 21, 2019: Tamar Jacoby, “The Future of Work for Those Who Don’t Attend College”
Oct. 22, 2019: Darrin McMahon, “Happiness Through History”
Oct. 28, 2019: Lynn Patyk, “Provocation as a Mode of Information Warfare”
Oct. 30, 2019: Oren Cass and Karl Widerquist on Universal Basic Income: A Debate
Nov. 4, 2019: Paul Christesen, “Leisure as a Luxury Good in Ancient Sparta”
Nov. 11, 2019: Meir Kohn, “How I Became a Libertarian”
2020
Jan. 7, 2020: David Hart, “Bastiat’s Economic Harmonies: An Overlooked Libertarian Classic?”
Jan. 9, 2020: Emma Hart, “Space in the Early American Marketplace”
Jan. 13, 2020: Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, “Religious Freedom in a Populist Age”
Jan. 14, 2020: Shruti Rajagopalan, “Eminent Domain in India and the United States”
Jan. 21, 2020: Student Reports, “Immersion Experience in Chile and Argentina”
Jan. 27, 2020: Stuart Finkel, “Political Philanthropy Under Lenin and Stalin”
Feb. 10, 2020: Peter Deshazo, “How Chile Passed Argentina on the Development Path”
July 27, 2020: Yascha Mounk, “Democracy and Diversity”
Sept. 11, 2020: Student Reports, “Democracy Erosion Project”
Oct. 6, 2020: David Schmidtz, “Adam Smith and the Invisible Hand”
Oct. 22, 2020: Elisabeth Curtis, “From Socialism to Capitalism: The Case of Poland”
Oct. 27, 2020: “Financing Vaccines: The Search for a Better Way”
2021
Jan. 21, 2021: Harsh Gupta (’09), “A New Idea of India”
Jan. 26, 2021: Julia Lovell, “Maoist China: A Global History”
Feb. 10, 2021: Stefan Link, “Technology Transfers and Competitive Development”
Feb. 15, 2021: Colleen Sheehan, “Capitol Crimes: Madisonian Reflections on Jan. 6”
Feb. 22, 2021: Meir Kohn, “Why There is No Such Thing as Market Failure”
March 2, 2021: Cory Smith, “Land Inequality and the Development of the West”
April 6, 2021: Virginia Postrel, “The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World”
April 13, 2021: Hans Werner Müller, “Democracy Rules: Liberty, Equality and Uncertainty”
April 21, 2021: Benjamin Friedman, “Religion and the Rise of Capitalism”
April 29, 2021: Alan Macfarlane, “Tocqueville on China and America”
May 11, 2021: Frank Dikötter, “China Past and Future”
May 18, 2021: Or Rosenboim, “The Emergence of Globalism”
Sept. 20, 2021: Doug Irwin, “How Economic Ideas Led to Globalization”
Sept. 27, 2021: Nien Lin Xie, “Down to the Countryside: Chinese Youth in the Cultural Revolution”
Oct. 4, 2021: Hank Clark, “Women and Capitalism: Fourteen Hundred Years in Fourteen Minutes (Okay, Fifteen)”
Oct. 5, 2021: Joe Henrich, “The WEIRDest People in the World”
Oct. 11, 2021: Ezzedine Fishere, “The Fall of Afghanistan: Views from the Middle East”
Oct. 18, 2021: John Campbell, “What Capitalism Needs”
Oct. 25, 2021: David Miller, “The Looming Threat of Climate-Induced Migration”
Nov. 8, 2021: Bernie Avishai, “The Clintonian Origins of Israeli Health Care”
2022
Jan. 24, 2022: Jason Barabas, “Rocky and Rockefeller Republicans”
Jan. 31, 2022: Elisabeth Curtis, “Ukraine Since the Soviet Collapse”
Feb. 7, 2022: John Welborn, “The Political Economy of Crypto-Currency”
Feb. 15, 2022: Xiaoyu Zhang, “Chinese Environmental Law in Comparative Perspective”
Feb. 16, 2022: Emily Estelle (’16), “After Afghanistan: Prospects for Middle East and African Terrorism”
Feb. 21, 2022: “Coach Buddy Teevens (’78) on Leadership”
Feb. 28, 2022: Ian Cruise, “What Every Student Should Know About Hume on Justice”
April 7, 2022: Sergei Kan, “Reflections on Growing Up in the Soviet Union”
April 12, 2022: Kevin Erdmann, “Our Housing Crisis: Sources and Solutions”
April 15, 2022: Walter Stahr, “Dartmouth, Slavery, and the American Civil War”
April 18, 2022: Jacob McNulty, “What Every Student Should Know About Hegel’s Political Economy”
April 25, 2022: Lucas Pinheiro, “Are Factories Obsolete?”
May 9, 2022: Meir Kohn, “Commerce, Predation, and Development”
May 13, 2022: Hank Clark, “French Election Aftermath”
May 17, 2022: Colleen Boggs, “Civil War Conscription: Battleground of Citizenship?”
May 23, 2022: Samuel Goldman, “After Nationalism”
Aug. 8, 2022: Yascha Mounk, “Origins of Identity Politics”
Sept. 30, 2022: Maria Pia Paganelli, “Why Read Adam Smith Today?”
Oct. 4, 2022: Hank Clark, “Workers as Traders: What Every Student Should Know About Labor History”
Oct. 10, 2022: David Miller, “Resurgent Nationalism”
Oct. 13, 2022: Lindsay MacMillan, “The Heart of the Deal”
Oct. 20, 2022: Mark Krikorian and Bryan Caplan, “Open Borders? A Debate”
Nov. 1, 2022: Graeme Garrard, “The Return of the State”
Nov. 7, 2022: Ferenc Horcher, “Conservative Prudence”
Nov. 9, 2022: Matthew Delmont, “Black Americans During World War II”
2023
Jan. 18, 2023: Lada Kolomiyets, “The Dark Side of Translation: Russian Censorship in Ukraine”
Jan. 25, 2023: Student Reports, “Econ 70 Immersion in Peru”
Feb. 7, 2023: Frank Dikötter, “China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower”
March 6, 2023: Danielle Gilbert, “No Concessions? Brittney Griner and U.S. Hostage Policy”
April 3, 2023: Polina Beliakova, “Putin and Zelensky—and Their Armies”
April 6, 2023: Pratap Mehta, “Democracy in India, Democracy in the World”
April 10, 2023: Emma Rothschild, “Adam Smith and 300 Years of Economic History”
April 12, 2023: Catherine Mann, “Thoughts on Monetary Policy Today”
April 13, 2023: Helena Rosenblatt, “Liberalism Past and Present”
April 19, 2023: David Blanchflower, “Why Central Banks Should Be Cutting Rates”
April 27, 2023: Shannon Stimson, “Adam Smith on Economics and the Natural Order”
April 28, 2023: Alessio Terzi, “Growth is Good: An Economist’s Perspective”
May 1, 2023: James Bessen, “Regulation, Innovation, and the New Economy”
May 1, 2023: Golfo Alexopoulos, “Russian Authoritarianism and Disinformation: Continuities and Discontinuities”
May 2, 2023: Doug Irwin and Scott Lincicome, “Trade Policy Today: A Debate”
May 3, 2023: Michael Cox, “Property Rights and Environmental Policy”
May 10, 2023: Jennifer Lind, “The Evolving U.S.-China Competition”
May 18, 2023: Kevin Erdmann, “Housing and the Real Story Behind the 2008 Collapse”
Aug. 10, 2023: Alan Kahan, “Freedom From Fear: An Incomplete History of Liberalism”
Aug. 15, 2023: Yascha Mounk, “The Identity Trap”
Sept. 18, 2023: Doug Irwin, “Are Economists Bad For Society?”
Sept. 25, 2023: David Blanchflower, “COVID-19 and Mental Health in America”
Sept. 29, 2023: Eric Hendriks, “Why Chinese Communists Love Western Conservatives”
Oct. 2, 2023: Anthony O’Hear, “Plato on Education in Goodness”
Oct. 3, 2023: Nassim Taleb, “Will Artificial Intelligence Worsen Global Fragility?”
Oct. 9, 2023: Meir Kohn, “Capitalism and Communism: How They Differ”
Oct. 16, 2023: Petra McGillen, “Fake News in Context: Nineteenth-Century German Journalism”
Oct. 25, 2023: Chandran Kukathas, “Immigration and Freedom”
Oct. 31, 2023: Andrew Young, “The Political Economy of the American Constitution”
Nov. 2, 2023: Phil Gramm, “Is Growing Economic Inequality a Myth?”
Nov. 8, 2023: Ania Bugajska, “Multiple Absence in Digital City”
Nov. 13, 2023: Doug Irwin, “Milton Friedman and Dartmouth College”
Nov. 14, 2023: Jennifer Burns, “Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative”
2024
Jan. 10, 2024: Darrin McMahon, “Equality: History of An Elusive Idea”
Jan. 16, 2024: David Li, “China’s World View”
Jan. 31, 2024: Nien Lin Xie, “Sent-Down Girls in China’s Cultural Revolution”
Feb. 8, 2024: Hank Clark, “Is Activism Harmful to Progress?”
Feb. 21, 2024: Alexsandar Mihailovic, “Populist Elitism in the United States and Russia”
Feb. 29, 2024: Joseph Heath, “Capitalism: Critique or Kvetch?”
March 27, 2024: Michael Clemens, “Immigration and the Economy: How Leading Economists Missed the Mark”
April 3, 2024: Daniel Di Martino, “The High Price of Free Things: How Socialism Destroyed Venezuela”
April 9, 2024: David Schleicher (’00), “In A Bad State: Fiscal Crises Today”
April 16, 2024: John Welborn, “A Short History of Short Selling”
April 23, 2024: Ian Vasquez, “Argentina: Populism, Corporatism, and Crisis”
May 1, 2024: Leslie Butler, “Women and American Democracy”
July 9, 2024: Rainer Zitelmann, “Socialism, Capitalism, National Socialism: Lessons From Germany”
July 15, 2024: Leonidas Zelmanovitz, “The Political Economy of Digital Currencies”
Sept. 26, 2024: Meir Kohn, “Is Finance Theft?”
Oct. 14, 2024: David Leonhardt and Michael Strain, “Is the American Dream Still Alive? A Debate”
Oct. 17, 2024: Meir Kohn, “There is No Malthusian Trap (the Trap is Predation)”
Oct. 21, 2024: “A Conversation With Lawrence Summers”
Oct. 22, 2024: Greg Reichberg, “Should Autonomous Weapons Systems Be Making Life and Death Decisions in War?”
Oct. 29, 2024: Peter DeShazo, “Latin Democracy Security, Democracy and Economy”
Nov. 4, 2024: Melissa Kearney, “Marriage and the Economy”
Nov. 7, 2024: Matt Yglesias, “The Strange Death of Neoliberal America”
Nov. 11, 2024: Russ Muirhead, “Ungoverning and the Politics of Chaos”
2025
Jan. 14, 2025: William Wohlforth, “Great Power Subversion”
Jan. 23, 2025: Meir Kohn, “Capitalism and Communism: What is the Important Difference?”
Jan. 24, 2025: Jake Monaghan, “Crime and Punishment: The American Policing System”
Jan. 29, 2025: Joshua Rubenstein, “The Last Days of Stalin”
Jan. 30, 2025: Zongyuan Liu, “China’s Real Economic Crisis”
Feb. 13, 2025: Meir Kohn, “There is No Such Thing as Market Failure”
Feb. 18, 2025: Joseph Fewsmith, “What Do We Know About China Today?”
April 4, 2025: Ben Vagle (’22) and Stephen Brooks, “America’s Edge Over China”
April 14, 2025: Jeff Tulis, “Normalizing Trump”
April 17, 2025: Meir Kohn, “The Myth of Economic Man”
April 22, 2025: Clark Neily, “Overturning Chevron: Revolutionizing the Administrative State”
April 28, 2025: Colin Calloway, “Hard Neighbors: The Scotch-Irish Invasion of Native America”
May 1, 2025: Meir Kohn, “Managers and Entrepreneurs”
May 6, 2025: Brooke Harrington, “Trump’s Broligarchy”
May 7, 2025: Joshua Tait, “Conservative Thought From Buckley to Trump”
May 12, 2025: Daniel Di Martino, “How Socialism Destroyed Venezuela”
May 14, 2025: Tony Banout, “Free Inquiry and Free Expression on Campus”
May 19, 2025: Doug Irwin, “Trump’s Tariff Obsession: Good or Bad for America?”
July 7, 2025: Ishaan Jajodia (’20) “Reclaiming Middlebrow Culture”
Sept. 18, 2025: Antoine Lilti, “The Legacy of the Enlightenment and the Paradox of Emancipation”
Sept. 19, 2025: James Read, “A Constitution Day Discussion”
Sept. 22, 2025: Kevin Evers, “The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift”
Sept. 24, 2025: Udi Greenberg, “The End of the Schism”
Oct. 1, 2025: Dominic Burbidge, “Who Needs Public Virtue?”
Oct. 8, 2025: Steve Teles, “The Abundance Agenda”
Oct. 16, 2025: Benjamin Friedman, “The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth”
Oct. 22, 2025: Dan Goor, “The Correct Answer to Absolutely Everything”
Nov. 3, 2025: Harvey Mansfield, “America’s Two Liberalisms”
2026
Jan. 14, 2026: Jennifer Lind, “Autocracy 2.0: China’s Smart Despotism”
Jan. 27, 2026: Frank Dikötter, “Red Dawn Over China: How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity”
Feb. 25, 2026: Lizzie Lee, “The China Model’s Fatal Flaw”
April 28, 2026: Rebecca Allensworth, “The Licensing Racket”
May 13, 2026: Lindsay MacMillan, “Life After Dartmouth: Career Pivots and Entrepreneurship”
May 19, 2026: Kevin Erdmann, “Housing Affordability and the Abundance Agenda”
May 26, 2026: Jay Shambaugh, “International Economic Policy in the 2020s”
May 27, 2026: Laura Field, “Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right”