Sheilagh Ogilvie: Classical Liberal Heroine
SUGGESTED
First, Ogilvie documents the historic responsiveness of individuals to economic incentives. Using a vast array of sources she offers compelling evidence that serfs, peasant producers and early merchants were highly responsive to changes in relative prices and thus that ‘incentives matter’ when trying to understand what lead to or prevented economic development in different historical periods. By drawing attention to this evidence Ogilvie’s work drives yet another nail in the coffin of those who claim, a la Karl Polanyi (see my post last week ‘Down with Karl Polanyi’ on this) that price responsive behaviour is merely a ‘social construction’ reflecting the obsession of contemporary economists with rational actor modelling.
Read the article on the Pileus website.
Mark Pennington is the author of Robust Political Economy: Classical Liberalism and the Future of Public Policy