What Should Be a Culture of Enterprise in an Age of Globalization?
By John D. Mueller
Posted: Thursday, March 29, 2007
The Intercollegiate Studies and Cato Institutes deserve our thanks for this conference posing the question, "What Should Be a Culture of Enterprise in an Age of Globalization?" But I think we must start with a prior question: Isn't "culture of enterprise" really an oxymoron?  [Read More]

The Economics of Loving Your Neighbor
Remarks at the Princeton panel discussion on Poverty, Social Responsibility, and Equality
By John D. Mueller
Posted: Monday, March 6, 2006
I’d like, first, to explain why modern economic theory has difficulty describing our topic; second, try to outline what “loving your neighbor as yourself” means in economic terms and the basic principles for doing so at the personal and political levels; and finally, to suggest how America can meet its biggest economic challenge in coming decades: to avoid repeating Europe’s mistakes, reflected in falling fertility and rising unemployment, as the result of misunderstanding those principles.  [Read More]

Jacques Rueff: Political Economist for the 21st Century?
By John D. Mueller
Posted: Friday, January 28, 2000
Jacques Rueff was the "rightest" political economist of the 20th century. Rueff was both a theorist and a successful practitioner of economic policy, who gave the earliest accurate diagnosis of the two biggest economic policy problems of the 20th Century: unemployment and inflation. He used that diagnosis to engineer several successful reforms of national economic policy, and his analysis is just as valid today as when developed in the 1920s. Rueff also contributed to the philosophy of the "social market economy" and of the European Union. He succeeded in explaining the critical link between economics as a science and economic policy as a branch of moral or political philosophy, the importance of which is increasingly evident in economic policy debates.  [Read More]

Nobel Prize Winner Robert A. Mundell: An Appreciation
By John D. Mueller
Posted: Wednesday, December 29, 1999
In October 1999, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics to Robert A. Mundell. The Nobel Committee cited Mundell "for his analysis of monetary and fiscal policy under different exchange rate regimes and his analysis of optimum currency areas." It may seem that the Nobel announcement, and press articles and editorials describing the award, have honored Mundell "far above our poor power to add or detract." Nevertheless, I'd like to put in my two cents, not only to acknowledge an intellectual debt, but also because I'm not sure that even his closest friends have succeeded in conveying exactly why Mundell is regarded as a great economist, even by those who have disagreed with him.  [Read More]