Current Projects

My current research centers on two projects.  Each project is being pursued as a projected book that I am developing in conjunction with my present teaching program.  Both of these projects, moreover, involve social theorizing in an emergent or non-equilibrium context, in contrast to orthodox formulations based upon a presumption that historical observations pertain to instances of societal equilibrium.  In other words, I analogize society to a continually moving crowd of pedestrians and not to a marching band, to recall an image that I have used on other occasions.

            One project pursues macroeconomic theory within this emergent context.  For four years ending in fall 2007 I taught the first course in a sequence on the Austrian Theory of the Market Process.  While teaching that course I developed the book manuscript Mind, Society, and Human Action:  A Theory of Social-Economy.  This book, the Preface of which is available here, will be submitted to publishers in late 2008 or early 2009.  My new project on emergent macroeconomic theory will continue the orientation set forth there, only it will focus on topics germane to macroeconomics; the Preface to that new book will be posted here shortly.  Perhaps the key feature of this project is its replacement of modeling based on representative agents by non-equilibrium, open-ended modeling.

            The other project pursues political economy from within an emergent context, and is being developed in conjunction with my teaching of the second course in our sequence in public choice theory.  This book carries forward the orientation I set forth in Fiscal Sociology and the Theory of Public Finance, which was published in 2007 by Edward Elgar.  The Preface to that book is available here, and the Preface to my new book on political economy will be posted here around the time the spring 2009 semester begins.  Perhaps the key feature of this project is its conception of polity and economy as intersecting orders, in contrast to the orthodox conceptualization of polity as an organization that intervenes into an economic order.