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Peter Boettke

BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism and Research Director for the Global Prosperity Initiative
pboettke@gmu.edu

Biography

Peter Boettke is the BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism and research director for the Global Prosperity Initiative at the Mercatus Center, a professor of economics at George Mason University, and the deputy director of the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy.

Before joining the faculty at George Mason University in 1998, Professor Boettke held faculty positions at Oakland University, Manhattan College, and New York University. In addition, Professor Boettke was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution for War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University during the 1992-1993 academic year. He has been a visiting professor or scholar at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, the Max Planck Institute for Research into Economic Systems in Jena, Germany, the Stockholm School of Economics, Central European University in Prague, Charles University in Prague, and the Hayek Fellow in 2004 and 2006 at the London School of Economics.

Professor Boettke is the author of several books on the history, collapse and transition from socialism in the former Soviet Union --- The Political Economy of Soviet Socialism: The Formative Years, 1918-1928 (Kluwer, 1990); Why Perestroika Failed: The Economics and Politics of Socialism Transformation (Routledge, 1993); and Calculation and Coordination: Essays on Socialism and Transitional Political Economy (Routledge, 2001). He is also now the co-author, along with David Prychitko, of the classic principles of economics texts of Paul Heyne's The Economic Way of Thinking (10th Edition, Prentice Hall, 2002). Professor Boettke has also edited the following volumes: Socialism and the Market: The Socialist Calculation Debate Revisited, 9 volumes (Routledge, 2000); The Legacy of F. A. Hayek: Politics, Philosophy, Economics, 3 volumes (Elgar, 1999), The Market Process, 2 volumes (Elgar, 1998), Market Process: Essays in Contemporary Austrian Economics (Elgar, 1994), The Collapse of Development Planning (New York University Press, 1994), and The Elgar Companion to Austrian Economics (Elgar, 1994).

In 1998, Professor Boettke assumed the editorship of the Review of Austrian Economics (Kluwer Academic Publishers). The Review of Austrian Economics was founded by late Murray Rothbard in mid-1980s to promote research and the further development of the Austrian school of economics. Prior to assuming that editorship, Professor Boettke was the editor of Advances in Austrian Economics. Since the mid-1990s, he has also been the director of the Advanced Summer Seminar in Austrian Economics, a post he took over from Israel Kirzner. Professor Boettke is a former president of the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics.

In addition to his scholarly activities, Professor Boettke is a dedicated teacher and has won teaching awards including the Golden Dozen Award for Excellence in Teaching from the College of Arts and Sciences at New York University. He has taught in the Honors College Programs at Oakland University, New York University, and George Mason University. Beyond economics, Professor Boettke is also an affiliated faculty member in the Russian Studies Program, has taught at the law school, and has served on dissertation committees in the school of public policy.

Professor Boettke's commitment to interdiscplinary research in the social sciences is reflected in his organization and directing of a weekly workshop in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. Recent speakers have included Jon Elster, Duncan Folely, Andrei Shleifer, Deirdre McCloskey, Vernon Smith, Richard Swedberg, and Sylvia Nasar among others. Research scholars working on projects that attempt to intergrate the disciplines of politics, philosophy and economics are encouraged to contact Professor Boettke about a possible visit to George Mason University to present their work.

Professor Boettke is also the faculty director for the Global Prosperity Initiative, which is part of the Social Change Project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. GPI was founded with the purpose of encouraging an analytical narrative approach to the institutional analysis of development and transition studies. This research seeks to combine an ethnographic style of field research with the analytical structure of economic reasoning to explore the fundamental questions of why some nations are rich and others are poor, and the broad implications of globalization for the liberation of humanity from poverty.

Peter Boettke

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