The Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) Research series encourages and explores the latest research by scholars. Our PPE Research series is a vehicle for scholars and graduate students to discuss and receive feedback on research.

The PPE Research seminar is typically held every other Friday from 2–3:30 p.m. during the fall and spring semesters.

For 2022–2023 academic year, we will be hosting a one-day conference in a condensed format on Friday, April 21, 2023 rather than a biweekly format.

If you are interested in presenting your research during the 2023–2024 academic year, please email EconomicLiberty@asu.edu with a brief abstract for review.

Seminar Schedule

2022–2023

This year we will be hosting a one-day conference on Friday, April 21, 2023 in COOR 6631.

Each session will be 60 minutes long with a 15 minute break between each session.

Date Presenter Working Topic
8 a.m. Welcome
8:30 a.m. James Strickland, School of Politics and Global Studies Constitutional Change and Interest Mobilization: Insight from the Progressive Era
9:45 a.m. Ecem Okan, University of Lorraine The Economic Role of Labor in Smith and Marx
11 a.m. Margaret Hanson, School of Politics and Global Studies Property Seizure and Security in Tashkent's Urban Boom
Noon Brown Bag Lunch
1 p.m. Angela Barnes, School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies Self-Nudging: Inconsistent Actions and True Preferences
2:15 p.m. Matthijs Tieleman, Center for American Institutions Seeds of Patriotism: The Origins of the Eighteenth-Century Patriot Atlantic
3:30 p.m. Scott Scheall, College of Integrative Sciences and Arts The Rise, Fall, and Strange Resilience of the Greater Certainty Thesis in Economics

2021–2022

Every other Friday from 2–3:30 p.m. via Zoom

* Note: The February 4 seminar will take place from 2:30–4 p.m.

Fall 2021

Date Presenter Topic
Fri, Sep 24 Vlad Tarko, University of Arizona The Variety of Regulatory Regimes
Fri, Oct 8 Kaitlyn Woltz, Claremont McKenna College Wardens, Political Scapegoating, and the Role of Prison Journalism
Fri, Oct 22 Maxime Desmarais-Tremblay, Goldsmiths, University of London Richard Musgrave and the Art of Tax Reform
Fri, Nov 5 Donna Feir, University of Victoria The Determinants and Impacts of Historical Treaty-Making in Canada
Fri, Nov 19 Dominic "Nick" Parker, University of Wisconsin-Madison Per-capita Payments and Tribal Governance

Spring 2022

Date Presenter Topic
Fri, Feb 4 * Peter de Marneffe, ASU School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies The Significance of Injustice
Fri, Feb 18 Emily Skarbek, Brown University Analytical Narratives in Political Economy
Fri, Mar 4 Ilia Murtazashvili, University of Pittsburgh The Ostroms in Beijing
Fri, Mar 18 Michael Moehler, Virginia Tech Diversity, Polycentricity, Justice, and the Open Society
Fri, Apr 1 Péter Galbács, Budapest Business School Historical Methods in Economic Methodology
Fri, Apr 15 Andrew Humphries, ASU School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership Separation of Powers, Commutative Justice, and the Right of Revolution in Adam Smith

2020–2021

Every Friday from 2–3:30 p.m. via Zoom

Fall 2020

Date Presenter Topic
Fri, Sep 11 Ross Emmett, ASU School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership Orthodox Economics and the Human Sciences
Fri, Sep 18 Andrew Smith, University of Liverpool Informal Institutions as Moderators of the Effectiveness of Formal Institutions in Discouraging Rent-Seeking
Entrepreneurship: How Changes in Norms and Values Interacted with U.S. Constitutional Limits
Fri, Sep 25 Luc Bovens, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill How Demographically Sorted is the US Voting-Age Population?
Fri, Oct 2 Henry Thomson, ASU School of Politics and Global Studies Controlling the Secret Police and Maintaining Social Order in Socialist Central and Eastern Europe
Fri, Oct 9 Robert Sugden, University of East Anglia The Community of Advantage
Fri, Oct 16 None
Fri, Oct 23 James Strickland, ASU School of Politics and Global Studies Higher-Law Lobbying at Constitutional Conventions
Fri, Oct 30 Saura Masconale, University of Arizona Corporations and Moral Sentiments
Fri, Nov 6 Voluntary Governance Conference
Fri, Nov 13 Erwin Dekker, Erasmus University of Rotterdam
Pavel Kuchar, University of Bristol
The Epistemological Break in Economics: What Does the Public Know about the Economy and What do
Economists Know about the Public?
Fri, Nov 20 Margaret Hanson, ASU School of Politics and Global Studies Under the Veil of Democracy: What Do People Mean When They Say They Support Democracy?

Spring 2021

Date Presenter Topic
Fri, Jan 22 Winter Institute for the History of Economic Thought
Fri, Jan 29 "Risk, Uncertainty and Profit" 100th Anniversary Symposium
Fri, Feb 5 Philip Arthur, ASU School of Sustainability Escaping Paternalism: A Response
Fri, Feb 12 Tyler DesRoches, ASU School of Sustainability When is Green Nudging Ethically Permissible?
Fri, Feb 19 School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership Annual Spring Conference (Canceled)
Fri, Feb 26 Michiru Nagatsu, University of Helsinki Non-paternalistic justification of nudges: a preference-constructivist approach
Fri, Mar 5 Jennifer Jhun, Duke University Multi-Model Reasoning in Economics
Fri, Mar 12 Spring Break (Canceled)
Fri, Mar 19 Steven McMullen, Hope College Can Baby Bonds Address Historic Racial Injustice?
Fri, Mar 26 Glory Liu, Harvard University Adam Smith, History, and the Meaning of Das Adam Smith
Problem in the Progressive Era
Fri, Apr 2 Stefanie Haeffele, George Mason University Crisis as a Source of Social Capital: Adaptation and Formation of Social Capital during the COVID-19
Pandemic
Fri, Apr 9 Brianne Wolf, Michigan State University No Man is an Island Entire of Itself: Adam Smith on Homoeconomicus, Autonomy, and Judgment
Fri, Apr 16 Spencer Banzhaf, Georgia State University Pricing the Priceless: A History of Environmental Economics
Fri, Apr 23 Péter Galbács, Budapest Business School Lucas's way to his monetary theory of large-scale fluctuations

2019–2020

Every Friday from 2–3:30 p.m. in CPCOM 480

Fall 2019

Date Presenter Topic
Fri, Sep 6 Ross Emmett, ASU School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership The Cautious Optimist: T. Robert Malthus on Population, Civilization and Progress
Fri, Sep 13 Paul Dragos Aligica, George Mason University Polycentricity and Modus Vivendi
Fri, Sep 20 Margaret Hanson, ASU School of Politics and Global Studies Anti-Corruption in Policy and Practice
Fri, Sep 27 Mary-Elizabeth Xaevier, ASU School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies Well-Being in Economics: Finding the Threshold of Well-Being
Fri, Oct 4 Stefan Kolev, University of Erfurt The Roads to Mont Pèlerin: Parallel Quests for Order in “Old Chicago” and Freiburg
Fri, Oct 11 Amin Sabzehzar, ASU W. P. Carey School of Business The Role of Religion in Online Prosocial Lending
Fri, Oct 18 David Schmidtz, University of Arizona Rediscovering Moral Science
Fri, Oct 25 Rebecca Livernois, University of British Columbia Epistemic Ascriptions and the Actualization of Externalities
Fri, Nov 1 Robert Kirsch, ASU College of Integrative Sciences and Arts Confronting “Imbecile Institutions:” Populism in the United States
Fri, Nov 8 Joshua Kane, ASU College of Integrative Sciences and Arts SYNERGIES of LIBERTY: Defense Expenditure and Industrial Take-Off During the Second Hundred Years
War
Fri, Nov 15 Mehrdad Esfahani, ASU W. P. Carey School of Business Lifetime Inequality Across US and Europe
Fri, Nov 22 Scott Scheall, ASU College Of Integrative Sciences and Arts F. A. Hayek and the Epistemology of Politics: The Curious Task of Economics 

Spring 2020

Date Presenter Topic
Fri, Jan 24 Winter Institute for the History of Economic Thought
Fri, Jan 31 Pedro Garcia Duarte, University of São Paulo Frank Ramsey’s Place in the History of Mathematical Economics
Fri, Feb 7 Rodney Machokoto, ASU School of Community Resources and Development Economics of Social Change — Systemic Social Change
Fri, Feb 14 Valery Dzutsati, ASU School of Politics and Global Studies The Logic of Violent Action against Secession: Security, Redistribution, and Culture
Fri, Feb 21 Michael Gifford, ASU College of Integrative Sciences and Arts Truth, Pragmatism, and Politics: Cheryl Misak on the Relevance of a Peircean Conception of Truth to
Political Theory
Fri, Feb 28 School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership Annual Spring Conference Citizenship and Civic Leadership in America
Fri, Mar 6 Ecem Okan, Center for the Study of Economic Liberty Smith's History of Europe: The Extent of Hume's Influence
Fri, Mar 13 Spring Break
Fri, Mar 20 Haeyoung Lim, ASU School of Politics and Global Studies (via Zoom) Transparency, Institution, and Investment: The Case of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative
(EITI)
Fri, Mar 27 Margaret Hanson, ASU School of Politics and Global Studies (via Zoom) Measuring Judicial Corruption
Fri, Apr 10 M. Nazim Tamkoç, ASU W. P. Carey School of Business (via Zoom) Production Complexity, Talent Misallocation and Development
Fri, Apr 17 Ahmet Altinok, ASU W. P. Carey School of Business (via Zoom) Dynamic Many-to-One Matching
Fri, Apr 24 Jennifer Jhun, Duke University (Canceled) TBA

2018–2019

Every Monday from noon–1:30 p.m. in CPCOM 480

Spring 2019

Date Presenter Topic
Mon, Jan 14 Scott Scheall, ASU College of Integrative Sciences and Arts Ignorance and the Incentive Structure Facing Policymakers
Mon, Jan 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Observed
Mon, Jan 28 Péter Galbács, Budapest Business School Some Notes on Robert Lucas’s Notes: The Lucas Papers in Methodological Perspective
Mon, Feb 4 Ross Emmett, ASU School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership Revisiting Frank Knight's "The Ethics of Competition"
Mon, Feb 11 Douglas Irwin, Dartmouth College The Rise and Fall of Import Substitution
Mon, Feb 18 Henry Thomson, ASU School of Politics and Global Studies Lord, Peasant... and Tractor? Landed Elites, Agricultural Mechanization and Democracy
Mon, Feb 25 Helen Baxendale, University of Oxford Teach for America as Institutional Subversive: The role of New Agents in American Education Reform
Mon, Mar 4 Spring Break
Mon, Mar 11 Tyler DesRoches, ASU School of Sustainability Value Commitment, Resolute Choice, and the Normative Foundation of Behavioral Welfare Economics
Mon, Mar 18 Chen Liang, ASU W. P. Carey School of Business IT-Enabled Monitoring and Labor Contracting in Online Platforms: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
Mon, Mar 25 Margaret Hanson, ASU School of Politics and Global Studies (Canceled) TBA
Mon, Apr 1 Bryan Leonard, ASU School of Sustainability Property Rights and Path Dependence: 19th century Land Policy and Modern Economic Outcomes
Mon, Apr 8 Amir Sabzehzar, ASU W. P. Carey School of Business Dynamic Shifting in Lending Priorities in Prosocial Crowdfunding Platform: Evidence from a Natural
Experiment

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