Has the Free Market Failed?

Join us for a provocative conversation with the world-renowned economic historian Deirdre McCloskey, as we ask: Has the free market really failed or have we misunderstood what made us rich in the first place? We’ll also take a look at the state of economics today—and whether the discipline itself needs a moral and intellectual reboot. Last, the event will explore contemporary issues surrounding the discourse of neoliberalism.

This event will be structured as a one-hour panel interview followed by an open question-answer session with a public audience.

About the speaker

Dr Deirdre N. McCloskey is a Senior Fellow and the Isaiah Berline Chair in Liberal Thought at the Cato Institute and a Distinguished Affiliated Fellow with the F.A. Hayek Programme for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

McCloskey is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Economics and History, Professor Emerita of English and Communication, and Emerita Adjunct Professor of Classics and Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Previously, she was the Visiting Tinbergen Professor of Philosophy, Economics, and Art and Cultural Studies at Erasmus University of Rotterdam and a tenured Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago where she taught for twelve years.

Her main scientific work began in the 1960s with British economic history, but widened to world history, especially in her Bourgeois trilogy, consisting of The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for a Commercial Society (University of Chicago Press, 2006), Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World (University of Chicago Press, 2010), and Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World (University of Chicago Press, 2016).

The panel will also feature Mani Basharzad, economic journalist, as well as Bryan Cheang from LSE (chairperson and moderator).