The Program on the Foundations of the Market Economy
The Program on the Foundations of the Market Economy is committed to understanding the dynamic economic forces of entrepreneurship and competition in the context of legal, ethical and social institutions. It also endeavors to explain the functions and origins of those institutions by using the tools of economic analysis. Its mission for students is to help remedy the clear deficiency of much graduate education in economics today that allows technique to crowd out the bigger picture of market institutions.
History and Legacy
Located in one of the nation’s premier economics departments, the Program continues the work of several generations of NYU economists to develop a comprehensive understanding of markets. The Program traces its intellectual origins to the seminar of Ludwig von Mises in the Graduate School of Business beginning in the late 1940s and through the decades of the Austrian Economics Program, founded by Israel Kirzner in 1975. It pursues an interdisciplinary approach to understanding markets. Students in the Program are trained not only in the most advanced current economic techniques, as part of the standard NYU economics curriculum, but also to appreciate the broader institutional framework without which market processes would be ineffective in producing a prosperous society.
Foundations of the Market Economy
In this spirit, the Program sponsors a book series, Foundations of the Market Economy, published by Routledge, which has produced more than thirty books dealing with such issues as:
- The knowledge content of prices
- “Free” or competitive banking
- Transitional political economy
- Time, uncertainty and business cycles
- Constitutional political economy
- Entrepreneurship and economic development
- Free trade
- Economic and political crises
- The culture of markets
- Morality and policy-making
- Microfoundations of macroeconomics
Colloquium Series
The focal point of the Program’s activities lies in our colloquium series, the Colloquium on Market Institutions and Economic Processes, held on NYU’s campus, which hosts influential and engaging speakers every semester. For more about the Colloquium series, please visit its main page.