Economics Presentations

This paper will discuss the rise of fascism, as a response to the economic, political, and intellectual trends of the early 20th century, and the effects it had on those factors. Fascism is a political system where the state has complete control over citizens, and all of society. It opposed free markets, forcing its citizens to do with their money what the state wished. It is at its core, similar to communism economically, but instead of the goal being a borderless socialist world, fascism strived for a national socialism, where the main focus was the strength of the state. The main factors which seem to have allowed fascism to spread was the loss of a common goal of the people of a certain nation. For example, in Italy, after World War One, the number of people who were religious was declining drastically, and traditional social arrangements were being heavily altered. With so much changing and there being the lack of a common interest between people, the love for one’s country seemed to be something to bring everyone together, this love however was not just patriotism, it was extreme nationalism, where citizens did everything for the state, and the state was the only reason to live. This resulted in fascism truly taking form, and started some of the most brutal totalitarianism regimes human history has seen.

The use and development of language is a fundamental aspect of what makes humans uniquely different than all other forms of the life. There are plenty of debates about the origins of natural language, grammatical structures, and why there is so much variation in language throughout the human species. Many linguists and behavioral scientists believe that language is the key in understanding human behavior. Nonetheless, there is an intellectual battle over language’s true nature as to whether it is merely a collection of referential symbols used to achieve a common goal or whether it is something more. Indeed, our ability, or lack thereof, to use and understand language significantly alters the way we interact with the external world and, more importantly, with each other and ourselves. My research explores the wide spectrum of conflicting views about language and to what extent language affects, or does not affect, human behavior and human action. This spectrum is wide. However, my research primarily focuses on two polar views. The first is the behavioralist view of language which reduces language to an unconscious and deterministic mechanical trigger mechanism of nervous systems receiving external stimuli and reproducing verbal responses which act as referential symbols of the original stimuli for others of the same speech-form (language). The second is a more idealist or personalist view which acknowledges the vast complexities and sophistication of language and how it can be used not only to communicate basic commands necessary to achieve a common goal for a social species like humans, but also as a way of processing information in the form of thinking which allows us to understand and express freely our own identities, values, ideas, and desires. After comparing these views, I offer commentary on why a richer understanding of language is necessary in promoting fuller view of the human person as language can often be abused to manipulate and coerce otherwise free, conscious, and rational agents.

Mercantilist economic policies became prominent as nations arose in the 16th century. Many realized that since economic power determined military power, economic policies should seek to make the country rich so they could field more powerful armies and navies. This paper explores several major mercantilist ideas and their connections to military power. I then consider Adam Smith’s response to mercantilism in the Wealth of Nations, and reflect on mercantilist policies today. Furthermore, I will draw from Ekelund and Hebert A History of Economic Theory and Method in order to discuss Western European nations seeking Mercantilist policies in order to protect each nations own best interests which would ultimately become the dominating economic policy and created “favorable” balance of trade in order to bring gold and silver; and how these ideas still are present in today's economic world and its modern day implications.

The following presentation will give an in depth analysis on the Coronavirus outbreak in China and how it affects its global partners in trade. My partner and I will run though theoretical and quantitative analysis spanning supply chain, macroeconomics, and firms direct financial impact. In particular, we will analyze the tech industry because of its heavily integrated supply chain across various countries before it arrives at its end product. The presentation will look at China's GDP as a starting value then discount its exports and/if the virus affects them. While China continues to cement themselves as a global powerhouse it will be important to identify the implications of this disaster situation. One of the purposes of this presentation is to examine the global impact if it continues to shut down factories due to the outbreak.This piece will divulge further into the supply chain and logistics of companies who outsource to mainland China. An integral part will be understanding the reactions of companies whether it be a shift to automation or a location change for production. Lastly, we will examine the S&P Asia 50 Index, the Dow Jones Titan 50 Index, and the FTSE 40 Index to determine how much the outbreak will hurt the Asian stock markets.

Adam Smith, a Scotish philosopher who had a critical influence on modern economics, was well attentive to metaphysics. His metaphysical ideas were the product of many philosophies but especially by the Stoic philosophy. The Stoics believed the universe had a logical nature to it that could be studied instead of a world with spontaneous occurrences. Their efforts were to understand how systems in nature functioned and how one could live a proper life according to these systems. Adam Smith uses the Stoic thought to construct systemic ideas of correct morality and economic practice. Smith explains sympathy to be the driving factor creating senses of justice, prudence, and beneficence that binds humans to one another. The formation of mutual relationships that begins with sympathy is a necessary system for characterizing morality. As shown in The Wealth of Nations, Stoic thought led Adam Smith to believe that people’s self interest is good for economies. Not that Smith believed selfishness was good but that people caring for their own well being and the well being of their company mutually benefits others and therefore is a driving force for economies. Adam Smith cites specific Stoic thought when reflecting on things like a metaphoric game of life, the harnessing of will power, and an examination of human nature through reason. The inquiries of this paper is focused on discovering the Stoic Ideas that affected Adam Smith and then what distinctions can be made of Smiths Application of Stoicism and the Stoic’s Application.

Panel Presentation: Civil society can be defined as the families, associations, communities, churches, and other private organizations that are formed by voluntary human action. This requires voluntary participation from people to form groups that build trust and shared values across communities, rather than by business or government. In behavioral and social theory, civil society is most important for the development and formation of individual character, ideas, relationships, and values in their community. But this importance depends upon those capacities of free will, rationality, and identity existing in the first place. Thus, behavioral or social theory that downplays human freedom and rationality will likely downplay the role of civil society as well. An interesting example of that occurred with the communist nations. Marxist thought downplayed human freedom and ultimate truths, claiming that people and society were largely products of economic arrangement. Thus, society was to be improved by changing the economic system, not building civil society. Embracing metaphysical assumptions that deny human agency and free will diminish the role of civil society in developing individuals and consequently turn to methods that focus on only the objectively measurable. Note this isn’t simply a problem of Marxism, but any theory that emphasizes excessive determinism and downplays human free will. I explore this theme first by considering the role of civil society presented in such thinkers as Robert Putnam. I then turn to analyses of civil society in the communist nations by authors such as Alvin Gouldner and Alexander Yakovlev.

For most of history, income inequality flowed from the political, economic, and social arrangement: Power and ownership could be concentrated in the hands of a very small number of elites. However, in the 20th century, numerous changes in the economic system made the causes of inequality far more complex to analyze for policy and moral consideration. In his later works, Robert Fogel, Nobel prize winner in economic history, explored this complexity and its causes. He suggests dividing up the sources roughly according to two variables: the capacity for individual action to matter (external causes or internal choices), and whether the impact is harmful or not. This provides four different major categories of factors responsible for inequality today, each with different analyses in addition to moral and policy response. The policy responses differ by source. Of the income inequality that is due to external, systemic causes, these are better addressed by government and economic policy. On the other hand, income inequality which results from values, ideals, human action/agency, etc., is best addressed through civil society. This presentation takes Fogel’s framework and considers analyses of inequality in each of the four sources.

While economic productivity is important for any economy, an additional question is how the system affects behavior, values, and how people interact with one another. For example, one common critique is that capitalism induces greed and individualism. But to accurately estimate these effects, we would want to explore similar behavior across different economic systems. This paper considers some of the common critiques typically made for how capitalism supposedly corrodes character, then looks as those behaviors in communist systems. I will take a particular look at honesty, greed, and self-interest. To do this I will review several major works done in the waning years of the communist systems which sought to provide a more accurate understanding of how their own system fostered, or hindered, moral behavior. Important to this project is understanding first how other systems affect moral behavior, as well as developing a more accurate estimate of how much is either not economic and/or part of human nature more generally.

Most people hold the belief that free-will is a given. We make decisions every day, so of course humans have free-will; right? Despite this, some science professionals such as Anthony Cashmore argue that this quality is impossible and we are just products of our genes and environment. In this project, I explore the basic assumptions of what it means to be human in the context of social movements such as women’s suffrage, the civil rights movement, gay rights movements, and environmental movements. The objective of this project is to challenge the materialist perspective as described by Cashmore, and to demonstrate how our assumptions of the human person have real consequences for how we interact in society.

America as a society, is run as through capitalism. People live to work instead of just maintaining a career to live. Why? Because money runs everything from the time we wake up until the time that we are lowered into our graves. It has been like this for many years, but is it as effective as it is thought to be? Does capitalism really promote freedom? “The most basic freedom is the freedom to make choices. Capitalism promotes choice. It promotes the ability of people to decide what they want to buy, how much they want to buy, where they want to live, where they want to work, and so on,” but what about people limited in their choices because of the choices that others have made? Lisa wants to live in a high rise penthouse in New York, but Lisa only makes $1,000 a pay period.. not nearly enough.

Over the past decade, there has been an exponential increase in artificial intelligence patenting. Researchers have leveraged AI technology for a wide variety of purposes, such as positioning living cells for growing human organs using acoustic waves, assisting cybersecurity analysts in identifying and responding to cyberattacks with remarkable efficiency, developing powerful new antibiotic compounds capable of killing some of the most dangerous species of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and assisting consumers in purchasing decisions through the use of sophisticated speech recognition and natural language-processing tools. With the rate at which AI technology is improving, it is not an exaggeration to say that AI will fundamentally transform the world economy within the next couple of decades. Consequently, this technological innovation is a source of considerable anxiety for many. A 2018 survey by the Pew Research Center found that between 65 to 90 percent of respondents in industrialized nations believe that computers and robots will replace many workers over the next 50 years. Although some researchers predict widescale job displacement resulting from the adoption of AI technology by firms, there exists a moderate consensus among researchers that these anxieties are overblown. The purpose of my research is to delve into the most recent academic literature pertaining to AI and its impact on the U.S. labor market. By doing so, my goal is to understand to what extent differing methodologies and assumptions of the human person might lead researchers to vastly different conclusions.

Robert Fogel, the late economist and Nobel prize winner, engaged in extensive research on poverty and inequality in the United States. Under Fogel’s framework, individual and social outcomes must depend on a complex mixture of both individual actions and socioeconomic conditions. Fogel’s analysis encompasses the past two hundred years of US history. In his analysis, he documents how the balance of these two components varies across time. Sometimes external circumstances play a larger role, while at other times individual level factors make a more noticeable difference. While still acknowledging the importance of material and physical factors, Fogel maintains a substantial component is individual action, empowered by what he calls “spiritual resources.” These resources refer to the values, virtues, ideals and ideas that influence the amount of effort people put forth to learn and work. Fogel argues that the evidence of social problems worsening after massive gains in material well-being indicates that these non-material factors must be incredibly relevant today, especially in developing human capital. While not intending to be definitive, he suggests these resources promote a rich understanding of human purpose, which enables a self-realization. Recognizing that spiritual resources are not simply mass produced, he observes that civil society – families, churches, civil organizations – will be the cornerstone in building and conveying these spiritual resources. This research examines how Fogel derived this argument from his economic analysis of United States history, then turns to his enumeration of spiritual resources. Because spiritual resources are not transferred via check or cash payment, the research concludes by considering the importance of civil society for passing on spiritual resources.

Throughout history people who have faced a near death experience have claimed to see the "afterlife" or out of body experiences while being brain dead. These claims could not be held credible, and we're dismissed under the notion that these people were not actually brain dead. However with modern technology giving way to CT scans these claims are being questioned seriously. Many religions and traditions assume some version of people as both physical and spiritual (having a soul). But how can we have evidence of something we cannot observe? In The Soul’s Upward Yearning, Jesuit priest Fr. Robert Spitzer contends that a number of human capacities and experiences seem beyond what would be possible if we are merely matter alone. In this presentation, I explore several of the examples he cites, including conceptual ideas and heuristic notions, the hard problem of consciousness, the capacity to correct algorithms, and near death experiences.

This paper works to discover the economic theories and policies of the Nazi Party in Germany, including how their understanding of human nature molded their beliefs and the implications of their policies. In the early twentieth century, there were many different ideas about what political and economic system worked best. The economic solutions varied from the right-leaning laissez-faire capitalism to leftist beliefs like communist and socialist communal ownership, and fascism with a state-dominated economic output and production. Communism, socialism, and fascism were anti-market. They saw capitalism as a detriment to society and looked for better results through an alternative system. Socialism looked to fix the issues of classes and economic status by handing complete control over to the state. Fascism, on the other hand, held beliefs in big business with an illusion of private ownership, while all, in reality, was owned by the state. With a modern assumption of National Socialism and its connection to Fascism being a far-right movement. However, this assumption is incorrect, as the real beliefs of the human condition embraced by the Nazi party and they’re counterparts throughout the world were Epicurean in nature, with an emphasis on eugenics and genetic perfection. This paper embarks on a quest to find out how the Nazi party’s beliefs, economic theories, and assumptions of both human condition and nature which heavily impacted the Nazi economic actions. Such policies include the real beliefs of the human condition embraced by the Nazi party and they’re counterparts throughout the world. These were Epicurean in nature, with an emphasis on eugenics and genetic perfection. Therefore, the National Socialist view of the human condition resulted in a unique economic policy that blended state ownership of socialism with the economy, while the people “privately” held the means of production. I am doing this by using several different authors who wrote in detail the implications and nature of the National Socialist policy of Fascism. These authors are Aldous Huxley, Friedrich Hayek, Avram Barkai, Francis Furet, and Jonah Goldberg.

Communism wasn’t simply an alternative economic arrangement. It flowed from Marx’s worldview of philosophical materialism. He recognized that if matter is all that exists, that places certain limits on morality and human functioning. He assumed that everything in society was predominantly driven by economic factors, and these forces inevitably produced communism. This undermined the potential role for individual action, ideas, values, religion, civil society, culture, etc. That excessive determinism drove many of their social and economic policies. After the fall of the USSR, Alexander Yakovlev, one of Russia’s leading intellectuals, cited the materialist philosophy as one of the foundational errors of Marxism. This paper will consider documents from the USSR regarding its own materialist foundations, as well as analyses of the consequences of that materialist assumption from Yakovlev, Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and philosopher Leszek Kolakowski. A key lesson is that while materialism was part of Marxist communism, it is not limited to that. Any culture can fall into the materialist belief that matter is all that exists. I will conclude with an exploration of Solzhenitsyn’s ideas on how although the West is adopting materialism unintentionally, it is likely to have many of the same consequences culturally.

It is often seen today that people born with mental and physical disabilities live with inherent dignity. One problem with this however is that we often fail to acknowledge what this dignity means to be human. In our modern world, there is a growing materialistic presence that misses a problem that is constant with this picture. This project will examine the problem to what extent do material and non-material factors matter in the mental and physical well-being of people with disabilities? Materialists will say that the loss of vital body parts or regular thought in the mind is crushing enough to an individual to the extent of their identity. However, there are many cases where morale is uplifted and creates an incentivized inspiration. This is only one example of the problem being discussed. Is the reason for this because of ideals and that it is what makes up the continuity of our lives? In this paper, not only will it evaluate the general idea of the connection there is between mind and consciousness, but it will look at how the problem is real and prevalent. Many neuroscientists have studied an immense amount of research on this issue which results in difficult questions we face as a society. Mario Beauregard and Denyse O’Leary attempt to give their analysis on how the human mind functions and how it relates to society. A similar analysis will be given in this project.

Marriage, as an institution, has been on a rapid decline in recent decades in the United States. Instead of tying the knot, couples are seeking alternative living arrangements like co-habitation or, when children are involved, shifting to single parenthood to raise children. Economists and sociologists alike have been documenting this mass retreat from marriage in order to seek answers. In keeping consistent with a reductionist view of the human condition, most scholars are quick to list structural or economic factors as the main cause for marital breakdown. Researchers blame a mass shortage of marriageable men, rising employment opportunities for women and national economic slowdowns as prime causes. Yet, is blaming the breakdown of marriage solely on economic causes intellectually responsible? The case of marriage provides a prominent example of the complexity of studying human behavior. Some human decisions are heavily influenced or even determined by material factors, such as economic arrangement or incentives. On the other hand, if people are free, rational beings, then some behavior will result from changes in ideas, ideals, and values. Our analysis must be sophisticated enough to consider all these causes. This paper serves to highlight how these aforementioned economic factors are only part of the story and how social and value-based factors play a large role in the retreat from marriage. In my review of the literature, I find that large cultural shifts – like the use of birth control and mass movement away from organized religion – vested in the personal life choices of an individual have a greater impact on the breakdown of marriage than most scholars make it out to be.

Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) vision of a massively controlled society didn’t come out of nowhere. It flowed from the complexity of ideas in the early 20th century which linked views of human nature to social policies. The late 19th to early 20th century was a major period of change in the fields of economic thought, social theory, and policy informed by the conceptions of human nature and abilities at the time. Perhaps most prominent, philosophical materialism implied people were simply animals, thus primarily or entirely formed by nature and circumstances. That view heavily shaped the development of the behavioral and social sciences and their policy prescriptions. Others, with varying commitment, took it to mean that society should control/plan the genes and conditions. That affected both eugenic proposals to control the gene pool, and more general progressive policies to shape the conditions. The Social Gospel movement retained a Christian emphasis on morality and human agency, but adapted it to the claim that conditions were extremely powerful in forming/shaping people and thus should be reformed (for the good). This paper will explore how differing views of human nature and influenced the movements and policies of the times, with ramifications in the form of social policy, economic policy, revolutionary violence, and systemic changes.

This presentation will explore philosopher Alex Rosenberg’s ideas regarding free will, rationality, intentionality, and the social sciences. Rosenberg makes two attacks. First, he claims that free will and intentionality likely do not exist. Consequently, behavioral theory that assumes rational choice, must be false. This is because if free will does not exist, then it would be impossible for there to be theories regarding rational choice. He labels assumptions such as rational choice “folk psychology,” which is the belief that people act freely for reasons and desires. Since people cannot be free or rational, all behavior collapses to biological drives, thus social scientists have little distinct substantive to contribute compared to biology. As a result, the social sciences can be better understood as subsets of biology. On the other hand, even if people do have free will and rationality, and thoughts and ideas thus matter, we cannot observe how much they matter. This is because folk psychology does an effective job in linking beliefs and desires to actions, but it fails to include empirical evidence. If social sciences cannot effectively observe what they claim is important (ideas) how can their methods be truly called “science”? Although Rosenberg puts together a twofold attack on the social sciences, an overarching study of the human person and the capabilities that come with being human will dispute them. To be human means to have free will, to be a rational being, and to have an identity. The ability to think freely and act on those ideas will validate the social sciences.

In this presentation, I will build upon my prior research exploring how eugenic ideals were implemented into economic policy in the United States during the Progressive Era. This project, focusing on the US following the great depression through the sexual revolution will briefly explain eugenics, the eugenics movement, and how it affects economics. Two of the ways that eugenics is promoted is through positive and negative eugenics. Positive eugenics encourages the “genetically fit” to reproduce. However, negative eugenics deals with disincentivizing the reproduction of the “genetically unfit,” through policy or sterilization. The group of “genetically unfit,” as deemed by the upper class, includes people with mental health problems, physical ailments, and the economically disadvantaged. Those who encouraged the eugenics movement were typically members of the upper class who had rejected religious beliefs and held a skewed idea of the human person. As these groups of people turned away from their religious beliefs and tendencies, they began to adopt a philosophical materialist point of view. I will talk about how those world views shifted from the Progressive era and how they impacted the way the economic structure of the post Great Depression era changed leading up to modern day. I will also explore how the implementation of contraception and the accessibility of abortions has reflected eugenic ideals, especially in urban areas. This research aims to uncover some of the tendencies to impose eugenic policies in the United States post Great Depression.

The question about where ideas come from and what they have the power to do is so interesting. I plan to explore what role ideas have played in economic thought throughout the years. I will go more in depth in specific time periods to see how ideas have also developed over time. People had way different ideas back then, and now new ones keep on developing. I will focus on the collapse of the USSR that happened in the 1980s to about the beginning of the 1990s. There must have been a set of ideas that could have led to this collapse, there is no way it just happened out of nowhere. Things happen because people get ideas and then execute them. Then, it becomes a chain that continues to happen over and over. I plan to look into how historical events have also been affected because of the role of ideas. Ideas comes with the concept of free will. I plan to slightly see how the concept of free will can connect to the ideas that have been developed. Free will gives us the power to do, think, and say whatever we want. This can definitely affect how one idea can be constructed. I will talk about the steps it takes to come up with one idea, and how it can happen automatically in our brains. This can all be summarized into presenting about free will, ideas, and how they affect historical events and economic aspects.

The data industry is currently valued at $56 billion and is quickly growing. Business, politics, social media, healthcare, education and many more parts of society have been infiltrated with huge amounts of data. With the evolution of technology, there has never been so much data at the public’s disposal. All the data out there raises questions concerning who knows what, how the data is obtained, and what are they doing with this data? These questions involve privatization rights and is a concern for society as a whole. The last question, in particular, is a mystery to the public but affects us all. All this data pulled together can be used to make large assumptions about the human person while removing the individual choice from the equation. If we are not careful about how we utilize this data, the individual freedoms of all humanity could be lost. In my research paper, I will look at the uses of this data and how our assumptions of the human condition could potentially shape this use.