 Okay, so this panel is on the future of Austrian economics, and really what we're doing here is highlighting some of the academic programs that we have here at the Institute. Your raise your hand if you're interested in doing graduate school work in social sciences, economics, or at least considering it. Okay. So we're very excited that the Institute is starting a master's program. With us, Joe Backer is going to talk a little bit about that, and we also have a fellowship research program that we do every summer with graduate students working on their dissertations, their papers, and things like that. So I figured to begin with, I'll let our three panelists introduce themselves, describe a little bit of their background and how they ended up here at the Mises Institute. So, Jeff, you want to start? Yes. In fact, funny you should mention that because this is a panel on the future of Austrian economics, and as I look around at my co-panelists in the audience, I realize the future of Austrian economics, much more about you all than me, you all being just a fraction of my age. Nevertheless, I have some things I'd like to share, which hopefully you will find helpful and encouraging. I think I would limit those comments to two major areas. The first is how delving into Austrianism some 30 years ago, shaped my future in a positive way, and then a bit about what I'm working on today, which I think makes your future look even brighter. So first, the ghost of Austrianism passed. Despite having 21 hours of undergraduate econ, I was first introduced to the Austrian School of Economics in 1988 by Ron Paul during his 1988 presidential campaign. And again, looking at the age of the audience, yes, there was a 1988 presidential campaign before 2008 and 2012. I shortly thereafter attended my first Mises University, like where you are now, it was at the time held in Stanford. That's when I first met Pat Barnett and the rest of the Mises staff, and they've been forever helpful and encouraging to me since that time as I'm sure you're finding them to be. I followed up MisesU by studying Austrian economics in a master's program at UNLV in Las Vegas with Murray and Hans. I mean, what else would have made sense after spending a week at MisesU, so that was good. I followed that up by going to law school and per my law school professors because I'd had this training in the Austrian school. I didn't really need to be taught how to think like a lawyer. I really just had to memorize law, which was actually much easier for me because I had a framework of what the law should be from being at UNLV, and so it made the law much easier to memorize. After grad school and law school, I spent two stints with Ron Paul, first on Capitol Hill as his deputy chief of staff and his legislative director, and then when three of us convinced him to run for president in 2008, he hired me as, or I guess in 2007 more accurately, he hired me to be chief legal counsel for the campaign, and when I wasn't doing these things, I was suing governments, using my law degree to sue governments, and I always found the opportunity to make good Austrian school arguments in legal briefs all the way up to state and the federal Supreme Court, so I guess I'm not telling you this to make you all jealous, not really, it's not just to make you jealous. Spending time with Hans and Murray and Ron, I probably learned so much and it was such a rewarding thing to do, but I'm telling you that because, well, I guess in the words of that famous political philosopher Napoleon Dynamite, if you keep your delving deep into the Austrian school, all your dreams can come true as well. So onto the present, although this was talked about enthusiastically for probably, well, years and years by Murray and Mises and a variety of others in other contexts, this idea of starting a purely Austrian graduate school has been on the mind of many. Luckily, back in November, the Mises Institute decided to move forward with that idea thanks to the help of some generous donors and they hired me to be provost to help get the program off the ground and when Pat said that they wanted me to be provost, my first reaction was, you know, I've been to lots of schools and I've heard that term but I never really understood maybe some of you know, but I had no idea what a provost was and Pat explained to me, well, this is the person in academia who does all the work and so, you know, my thoughts then went back to one of Murray's favorite words and I said, well, that sounds kind of unsavory, but then I read a little bit further about what a provost was and I found out that the original meeting was keeper of the prison. I said, yeah, I'm all in and when do I start? But because the program now exists, I see the future of Austrianism which sort of I guess takes us to our topic as being brighter for each and every one of you. In August of 2020, we will start a first cohort of graduate students despite no marketing, no serious marketing of the program, we have dozens and dozens of applications for a very limited number of spaces and if you think it's just because the program is inexpensive and I'll talk about that momentarily, that's not it. I mean, we have our average accepted student as a GPA of 3.7 and at least half of them already have one graduate degree. So, you know, continue to do well if you wanna be in this program, it's very much in demand. Other schools are striving or struggling, I should say, we're thriving. In why is this? I think because other schools are very bad as you heard from Tim Terrell earlier in the week but more importantly that this is purely Austrian. Even my program at UNLV, I had to take three out of my 30, or nine out of my 30 hours with non-Austrians here. Purely Austrian. All the faculties have terminal degrees, PhDs or JDs and they're all past scholars that came through the same doors that you walked through and got help from the Mises Institute along the way. Thanks to generous donors, one sixth is the price that you pay of what you would pay at another graduate program. It's the entire program is less than $5,000 for the student and I think, you know, if you wanna take a serious look at this, like I say, study hard. If you haven't gotten a catalog somewhere else on campus this week, make sure and see me and we'll get you the information you need. I think that probably taken my share of time. That's great. So again, now we have two fellows, Anton Chamberlain, do you wanna, it's my little bit of your back ready? You have some strong Austrian pedigree. Yeah, I guess I can do that. It's funny that Ron Paul's first presidential campaign is what got you involved and it was his last campaign that got me involved in 2012. I was a freshman in high school and just stumbled upon some Ron Paul videos on YouTube and then next thing I knew I'd opened Pandora's box through the suggested videos and then I found my way to Mises.org and eventually started coming to Mises events and I came to my first Mises University in 2014 right before my senior year of high school. While I was there, I met Walter Block and he asked me if I would come to his school once he found out that I was still, hadn't even become my senior year of high school. So I promised to apply. I didn't want to promise that I'd go but then I applied and Lolo was very generous and I was able to attend. After spending time with Walter at Lolo, New Orleans and then I went to Troy for a master's program which is not too far from here but also I have Austrian professors such as GP Manish and Malavika there. So it's been I guess six, seven years of attending Mises events and learning more and more and that's kind of what got me here as part of my research this summer is on the Mexican miracle which is supposedly from 1940 to 1970, Mexico entered the real world. They industrialized their protectionism and the standards of living increased and everything was great until Mexico entered what they called the lost decade. My research is basically showing there was basically 30 years of malinvestment and misguided government led industrialization but yeah, I guess that's kind of it for now, yeah. Christopher Hansen, explain a little bit about your background and what brought you to the Institute? Well, I'm a graduate student with Guido Guisman in Anchi in France. I guess it's not quite the same as studying with Marie-Roppa and Hans Hoppe in Nevada but since they're both missing in action I claim it's probably the next best thing around. I've been a fellow at the Institute. Well, some of fellow of these past four years now and I've had the opportunity to work on my various research projects related mainly related to my dissertation and various papers. But this summer I've been doing more well, I think more interesting research because I've been poking around of the archives, looking through various files, recent acquisitions to see what else there might be that we can find any forgotten master piece from the Institute for some reason but let's never publish. Your hope is to be the Patrick Newman for Mises. And you found a transcript of the Mexico paper that Mises wrote, correct? Well, sure, no, but he found one of the transcripts of Mises wrote an article called Mexico's Economic Problems in June of 1943 and reading that kind of was the impetus for me wanting to explore Mexican economic history but you found the earlier transcript of it in the archives this summer, which is pretty cool. And that's one of really the neat resources here physically at the Institute is that we are an active research organization. Patrick Newman a few years ago during our Rothbard Graduate Seminar which is a week long program for graduate students, he was able, earlier when he was a fellow he discovered a discarded chapter of man economy and state. And so he was able to work in the insights that he gathered from seeing what Rothbard took out, what he replaced it with and use that to illustrate some of the development of Rothbard's thinking. And so these are the sort of insights that you can really only get from playing around with the papers from actually spinning the time to do it and that's why it's so exciting when we have our research fellows here that can kind of do some of that heavy lifting. What are some of the other advantages that you've felt as being fellows here in Auburn at the Institute? Well being a fellow here in Auburn is pretty cool. One being a fellow through the Institute is nice because you have wonderful Austrian faculty that can guide you in your research. I'm sure you could do other summer fellowship in research programs but the likelihood that you'll be guided by men that actually know economics is not very common out there but here obviously it's a part of the course. So it's been great to have Dr. Thornton and Dr. Slarno just to name some of the faculty here to kind of read what you're doing, kind of give you advice and push you. Being in Auburn is pretty fun too because Auburn being a massive university, we have access to their library, their databases and so it's very nice to have not only the resources at the Institute here but we also have the resources of a massive university at our disposal. Yeah, one basic thing that's probably also worth mentioning is that the Institute is very generous in basically every way possible. Not only do you get a nice apartment to live in while you're here, they also provide a stipend so you don't have to worry about food just during the summer. And you have the resources at the Institute that's great as Hansen just said. So yeah, the people are pretty nice too most of the time. If you don't allow them too much. Yeah, the staff here is wonderful. Yeah, so yeah. Joe, can you talk about some of the faculty that we have coming on board with the master's program and kind of sort of the curriculum that you have set up for a look at? I won't trust my memory but I can do that if I look at our lovely graduate catalog. Obviously, we have some full-time faculty which I can probably name. We have Dr. Salerno, of course. We have Dr. Thornton, Dr. Newman, David Gordon, Dr. Klein and I think that and myself, for someone who wants to do a law and economics thesis, I'm eager to help. In fact, someone's one of your peers stopped by during the weekend where I had a long discussion about a law and economics project which I'm excited to help him with. As far as part-time faculty, Bob Atamarko, Walter Block, Mark Brandley, Per Bilan, Paul Swick, Dr. De Lorenzo, these are names you're gonna recognize because I attended most of the sessions electronically from my office so I could continue to, we have a class starting in a few weeks and so I wanted to be available to the students if they had questions we still have people, of course, applying. Dr. Herbner, Dr. Hauden, Sandra Klein, Dr. McCaffrey, Bob Murphy, Sean Rittenauer, Tim Terrell, and then we've also added a second Newman. So besides Patrick, we also have Jonathan Newman. So I mean, it's an all-star faculty and it's, as I bragged about earlier, it's pure Austrian so it's a one-of-a-kind program and then there was, oh, the list of classes. We're offering both a certificate and a master's degree program for sort of regulatory reasons but Austrian, I'm gonna just put Austrian in front of all these, but Austrian, micro, Austrian monetary, quantitative economics, uses and limitations, the macro history of thought one and two, comparative econ systems, history of regulation and financial crises and then there will be a thesis requirement and we will offer as a, the program's 100% online but we will offer it as a intensive one-week elective, the Rothbard Graduate Seminar, which some of the folks here have already attended. So that's the list of classes. Anton and Christopher, do you have, in terms of some of the interesting Austrian research that you're going on with, that you've seen as an active student, is there anyone out there that you think is doing sort of modern Austrian research that you find particularly interesting and perhaps are inspired by for your own work? For my own work. Well, seeing some of Patrick Newman's work in economic history has been really fun. There was also a presentation by Louis Ruine who did a history of the Bank of France and I remember listening to him present on that thing. Oh, I want to do something similar with the Bank of Mexico. So I think the research in this area of economic history, looking back, there's been a lot done on American history from an Austrian perspective and that's lovely but there are other countries in the world that might help with our international reach. Yeah, thank you. If we have more Austrian research on other areas of the world. So I think seeing that there is good Austrian economic history that can be accomplished and it's being done by people like Patrick Newman and whatnot has been really inspiring to see that there are, there's still work to be done on the Austrian tradition. I think one of the things that's very easy to come away with me is you. As you listen to all the faculty, you see all the wonderful people and you kind of think, oh, everything that's ever been written about has already been written about. There's nothing else for anyone in this room to do and that isn't true. And so there's always work to be done and even if it's a slight adjustments, one of my professors at Lowell University, Dr. Barnett, he talked about Mises and Rothbard built this beautiful cathedral and it's, of course, there's work that could be done to it but it's kind of, it's kind of, that work is done but that doesn't mean that there aren't things inside the cathedral that can be adjusted like little paintings that you walk up and you notice it's crooked so you can come up and kind of fix that. And so while no one in this room will discover praxeology because that's already been done, there's still plenty of work to be done. Well, some young, perhaps not as well known Austrian economist that I personally am inspired by. I probably mentioned, first of all, Carl Friedrich Israel who is also a student of Guido Hilsmann and who was a fellow here for many years, too, actually. He's done important work on central banking and inequality. I think last year he gave a lecture here on it that might be online. And he's also just to show how the young rebels are rising up against the hated patriarchs of Austrian school. He's had a feud of some years now, a literary feud, of course, with Dr. Salerno over the income effect and he started a second front, I think, in discussions of this utility of labor but that's in a forthcoming paper. So there's plenty of action going on, so to speak. Another one who's worth mentioning is Arcadius Siran. I probably put you at his last name but he wrote a very good book on the Kantian effect last year which is probably too expensive for you to buy but you can then, because it's with an academic publisher but you can then get it from a library. And reading that you'll basically learn everything there is to know about the Kantian effect. I think that, in particular, with so much attention being directed towards income inequality and things like that. It's funny that on Twitter this past few weeks there's been a lot of people highlighting how Kantian effects have never been described. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and so there's a lot of very important Austrian insights that can be applied to very different past historical examples that can really add to some of the conversations that are going on now. Does anyone here have any questions about either the master's program or the fellowship for interested in your own academic careers? Yes. Yeah. You said there's a certificate program but I just looked online and I didn't see it. How do we find out more about the certificate? It's also in the catalog. It's actually the same in content. I mean, to explain that, I would have to and can just talk briefly about the creation of the program. Initially we wanted to do a certificate program and with no one behind the certificate except the reputation of the Mises Institute which would have been perfectly adequate in my opinion. But in order to teach post-secondary classes, we had to get a post-secondary private school license from the state of Alabama which gives us the ability to teach in 35 states as long as we have no physical presence in those states. In order to teach in all 50, rather than battling 50 different legislatures and compliance agencies, we can join a rest of prostitute agreement but we can only join that if we offer degrees and we're accredited by a DOE, recognize accreditation agency. So there is one state where we can only teach a certificate program until we get that certification. And then the other thing is if there was someone really, really deserving that did not yet have an undergraduate degree. I mean, we're getting a lot of applicants with graduate degrees already but didn't have an undergraduate degree. We can't accept them into a master's degree program but we could put them in a certificate program without risking our own accreditation. But it's content-wise exactly the same. It's a good question though because people call me and say it looks like the same thing and substantively it is. Okay, thank you. Sure. Yes. Are fellowships available for law students? I know that in the past we have had law students here so that's one of the nice things is not purely for the economic discipline per se but there's a full vetting process where Dr. Slarno and the academic wing but it's not necessarily limited purely to economic graduate students. Dr. Wukasz Dominik Wright was an econ PhD. He was a philosophy so that, yeah, you don't need to be studying economics in the university to be a fellow. Yes, Ignatia is also not economics but she's here as a summer fellow. Any other questions? Speaking of law, I do have a little anecdote from my time at UNLV. In listening to all the lectures, throughout the week up in my office I was reminded of several things of my time at UNLV almost 30 years ago. And while Rothbard I think was a very good legal theorist I don't think he would have been a good legal practitioner and let me explain why. One of the jobs that I had when I was in grad school, this was a time when the casinos were greatly expanding in Las Vegas. Treasure Island was being built. I wanna say the mirage. In order to do this, the casinos had to buy up land around themselves for parking lots. And much of this land was made up of trailer parks. And so my job, I worked as a consultant with a friend of mine who also had some university activities. His job was to try and get people out of these trailer parks so the casinos could take possession of them sooner. And the reason that this was a job is because there was a statute on the books that said if you buy a trailer park you have to give people 12 months to leave the park even if they were on month to month rental contracts. So I was talking to Murray one time and explaining what I was doing during the summer during the hot summer in Vegas is trying to convince these people to move out of their mobile homes and clear the park. And he's like, he couldn't believe there was a law that required this 12 months. He said, they're mobile homes. They're by definition mobile. Just move them out. So I think if we were to do that we would have had some legal problems. But again, the legal theorism was very good but I don't think maybe a great practitioner. Ron, do you have any pretty good favorite Walter Block story? I mean, since you've been leading the campaign get him a raise at Loyola. Oh, yes, yes. No, I think you got it backwards. I definitely did the petition to get him fired. I don't know if I can think of a funny one. He has a whole bunch of jokes there, just canned jokes. I started to keep tallies in my notebook how many times I would hear the same joke out of him. He's very fond of one that's like, well, no disrespect to you, but what do you call 50,000 lawyers at the bottom of the sea? A good start. So I love that Walter joke. Well, but one of my favorite memories with him is he called me up one time and he knew that I was in choir at Loyola and he knew I liked music and whatnot. So he calls me and he's like, what are you doing? I think tomorrow. And I was like, I don't know. He's like, do you want to go see Mozart's Requiem with me? There's a performance at the Orpheum downtown with the Louisiana Philharmonic. And I said, of course, or no, it's Handel's Messiah. I'm sorry. I just remember thinking, like as we were going to, like this is such a cool moment. Like I came here to study economics with Walter, but here we are, like we're going to hear Handel's Messiah. And by the end of my time there, I'd learned a lot of economics while I was returning to theory. But I left with a friend and I left with a mentor. And I think that was the best thing I got out of my pre-years in New Orleans. So. Christopher, what are your thoughts about how the state of the Austrian school kind of within Europe and some of the scholars that we have over there? Do you have any insights? And also there's a, every year, there's a Austrian economics meeting Europe that was actually started by Dr. Israel. And a few 2014, I think, Misesiu alums that got at Skybar Friday night of the event and decided they wanted to keep this party going. So there's a very active student conference in Austrian economics in Europe that has been a spin-off of Misesiu. But do you have any thoughts from over there? From the Austrian school in Europe? Yeah. Well, I mean, it's very dispersed. So you have a few good people around in the, quite the sorts of Madrid has a very good program. And quite a few fellow Austrians down there that's a few dispersed from Germany that various universities. And there's Hülsmann in Angersche. But there's no real, no real centers in the same way as you have the Misesiu Institute here and the other place. Not Loyola, but the other place. But yeah, I mean, we have, as I said, it's more dispersed but there is still kind of a grassroots connection, I'd call it. Although since we have fewer, we have to be nicer to the non-Austrians. So it's quite liberating to get over here sometimes and not have to be nice to the socialists. That's been one of the great things about being here at the Institute is seeing all the scholars and all the talent we have scattered throughout the world. So obviously we have a lot of representatives from Brazil have come through the program, both Misesiu and RGS and the Fellowship in recent years, thanks to the growth down there. The Baltic states, someone from Lithuania last year who, there's a very strong Austrian movement there. Usually it's interesting how former Soviet countries tend to be much harder core on the socialist questions. Imagine that? Yeah, so it's always great to see that the talent and the global growth of the Austrian school and where we're excited about the role that the master's program and the fellowship program plays in incubating that talent. So if you have any further questions throughout the day, I'm sure that they'll make yourselves available and I think that is our time for this panel.