Hayek Program Podcast · Mercatus Center at George Mason University

Perspectives on Peace — Peter Boettke on the Life and Legacy of Kenneth E. Boulding

·1 hr 19 min·5 clips

Boulding wanted the structure of economics, but not an “amorphous jellyfish” without rational-choice bones.

1. Hayek Program Podcast discusses Kenneth E. Boulding with Chris Coyne and Pete Boettke. 2. Chris Coyne is Associate Director of the F.A. Hayek Program, and Pete Boettke is its Director and a Distinguished University Professor of Economics at George Mason University. 3. The episode asks how Boulding’s life, peace work, and economics connect to “mainline economics” and the Hayek Program’s concerns. 4. Boettke recalls Boulding as a Robinson professor at George Mason during the 1986–87 academic year. 5. He says Boulding’s office was in sociology because the conflict resolution people were located there. 6. Boettke and Dave Perchicko visited Boulding early, attended his classes, and talked with him in his townhouse on 123. 7. Boettke links Boulding to the paper “After Samuelson, Who Needs Smith?” in Hope. 8. He says Dave Perchicko was drawn to Boulding’s peace studies work, while Boettke was drawn to his critique of Whig history in economic thought. 9. Boettke explains mainline economics as the Smithian tradition of exchange, institutions, and the invisible hand. 10. He contrasts that with mainstream economics, which he defines as whatever is currently fashionable in the discipline. 11. Boettke says Boulding gives the language of mainline economics, even when he is not usually grouped with Smith, Menger, Hayek, or Buchanan. 12. He uses Boulding’s book Toward a Reconstruction of Economics to connect cost accounting to institutions such as property, contract, and consent. 13. Boettke notes that Boulding was favorable to Keynes and spoke of the “three K’s”: Keynes, Koleski, and Kenneth. 14. He says Boulding favored evolutionary theory and described the economic process as dynamic rather than static. 15. Coyne and Boettke walk through Boulding’s life from Liverpool in 1910 to Oxford in 1928 and Chicago in 1932. 16. They note that Boulding published in the Economic Journal on displacement costs and later worked with Frank Knight and Jacob Viner. 17. Boettke emphasizes Boulding’s style of teaching, including reading The Wealth of Nations, David Ricardo, Marx, and Keynes while inviting discussion. 18. He describes Boulding’s emphasis on the “image,” imagination, and the human mind as central to social science. 19. The conversation is reflective and teacherly, with Boettke answering at length and Coyne steering the chronology. 20. Listeners interested in Adam Smith, Boulding, Hayek, Buchanan, and peace studies would get the most from it.

As heard by us

A measured portrait of Boulding as a thinker of imagination, peace, and human-centered economics.

This episode treats Kenneth Boulding as more than an economist. Pete Boettke uses the conversation to sketch a thinker who kept imagination, perception, and peace at the center of the social sciences.

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A calm guide to Kenneth Boulding, Pete Boettke's memories, and the mind behind economic choice and social life.

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