The 2024 Austrian Economics Research Conference was an absolute blast! Reuniting with friends and old professors alone made making the trek to Auburn, AL worth it, but hearing lectures from my fellow Austrian economists made the event enlightening as well.
This conference celebrated the 50th anniversary of the South Royalton conference, an event held in the 70s aimed at meeting with fellow Austrians and disseminating recent advances in Austrian research. The event featured a panel of South Royalton attendees - Walter Block, Jack High, Randall Holcombe, Murray Sabrin, and Joe Salerno. For anyone interested, the panel was recorded and should be available online soon.
In other news, I won the annual Kenneth Garschina Graduate Student Essay Contest. My essay, “Hazlitt Against Keynes on Unemployment and Wages: A Lesson for Modern Macroeconomics,” came in first place. In the essay, I use Henry Hazlitt’s insights to criticize recent developments in macroeconomics. The essay can be read here.
I also presented my paper, “A Property Rights Approach to Children.” In the paper, I make the case that giving parents more freedom and control over children might lead to superior outcomes for children. This paper is, per my evaluation, a significant step toward consistent laissez-faire family policy.