It Warms My Heart

Well the new academic year is now two weeks old and I am well into my four courses: Principles of Microeconomics, Foundations of Economics, Intermediate Microeconomics, and Money and Banking. Over the weekend I spoke to prospective students during Crimson Day. I explained to them our philosophy of economics that develops from our Christian worldview and how the Austrian tradition of economics developed out of the Spanish Scholastic understanding of the nature of man as a being made in the image of God as a rational actor.

That philosophy is apparent in our curriculum at Grove City College. In our Principles of Microeconomics and Macroeconomics courses as well as in our Foundations of Economics course we use my book, Foundations of Economics as our main text. It is thoroughly steeped in the economics of Mises and Rothbard. In my Intermediate Macroeconomics course, we learn and evaluate neo-classical price theory from a praxeological perspective using a text book co-authored by my professors Robert B. Ekelund, Jr. and Richard Ault. In Money and Banking we use Murray Rothbard's The Mystery of Banking as our main text along with numerous supplemental readings. It is our contention that the praxeological, causal-realist approach to economics best allows us to discover economic truth and to answer real economic problems, such as how to get us out of the great recession.

Of course, as professors, our desire is to encourage our students to delight in economics and to benefit from their being introduced to good, sound, mundane economic theory. My heart was warmed, therefore, when one of my former students posted as their facebook status, "Hello Mises and Rothbard. Welcome back to my life."