Peter Boettke & Federica Carugati on Reframing Modern Political Economy

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Peter Boettke interviews Federica Carugati, on reframing modern political economy. Carugati begins by sharing how she began her study of political economy and explains her work on premodern case studies, detailing which factors to consider when selecting premodern societies to apply to the modern day, including elements of size, homogeneity, and exclusion. Boettke and Carugati discuss the process of institution formation and the importance of creative and adaptive solutions. Later, they discuss how we ought to reconstruct the political economy and social science lenses, creating a space for a broader notion of theory and a richer theory of empirical research. Carugati emphasizes the need to build models where we can consider the complexity of human behavior, social norms, values, etc. They end their conversation with considerations of neoliberalism, governance by consent, and lessons on the importance of discipline and passion.

Carugati is a lecturer in history and political economy at King’s College in London and author of A Moral Political Economy: Present, Past and Future and Creating a Constitution: Law, Democracy and Growth in Ancient Athens.