Loose, Vague, and Indeterminate

On Episode 4 of Loose, Vague, and Indeterminate, Rajee Agrawal joins me as cohost to talk to PhD student Jon Murphy. We ask Jon about his experience teaching introductory economics, international economics, and law and economics. We also discuss the recent Nobel Prize in Economics winners and the prize in general. Jon talks about what economists should do and retells a classic story about Ronald Coase at the University of Chicago.

Episode 3 of Loose, Vague, and Indeterminate is here! This episode’s guest is first-year Ph.D. student Jacob Hall. We discuss David Hume’s book The History of England and touch on political economy, theories of jurisprudence, and development economics. We also talk about what it’s like being in the first year of the GMU Econ Department’s Ph.D. program.

On the second episode of Loose, Vague, and Indeterminate, I am accompanied in my hosting duties by Econ Society member George Minning as we interview Caleb Petitt.  Caleb is a fellow undergraduate at George Mason University who went on an exchange trip to Spain.  On that trip, he acquired one of the wildest stories you’ll ever hear about hitchhiking his way through Europe.

Inspired by Henry Hazlitt’s famous book, George, Caleb, and I teach economics in one lesson using the hitchhiking story.  We cover marginalism, subjectivism, state vs. private ownership, and much more.

“Loose, vague, and indeterminate” is a phrase from Adam Smith’s 1759 book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS). To explain what that phrase means, Prof. Daniel Klein, a Smith expert, is our first guest. We dive into TMS and talk about how scholars view the book, how Smith breaks down justice, and how the book relates to our lives today.