Economics Department Mullen Lecture

Deirdre McCloskey, Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago from 2000 to 2015 in Economics, History, English, and Communication

Deirdre McCloskey's talk will focus on how workers' economic conditions improve when they are give a chance to live in a better functioning economy. But how do we get that better functioning economy? McCloskey explains what she call the Bourgeois, the "experiment" of the 19th century, "Laissez-nous faire," that fostered an environment where ordinary people were generally left alone, allowed to open shops or enter occupations. This, she argues, led to significantly betterment through innovation-electric lights, railways, radio, espresso machines, containerization, dropped ceilings, books and newspapers.  "Let me, une bourgeoise, start a business bettering some activity, and let me in the first act keep the profits (in the second act the irritating imitators of my success enter and spoil by profits), and in the third act I will make you (voi) better off, gigantically." McCloskey states.

BOOK SIGNING AND RECEPTION TO FOLLOW