Event Date: March 26, 2019 - 12:00pm to 1:30pm
Location: FSS 4004, 120 University Private

Presented by CIPS and the International Political Economy Network (IPEN) 

The market system has experienced a legitimation problem since the recent financial crisis, which has since been exacerbated by the rise of authoritarian varieties of capitalism and the Trump administration’s brand of industrial protectionism. The paper argues that Schumpeter, Polanyi and Hayek shared a skepticism regarding the sustainability of market societies and the economic dynamism of markets would be confronted by endogenously caused social, cultural and political obstructions that would endanger its very existence. Their diagnosis of capitalist development would confirm the allocative workability of the competitive market mechanism while acknowledging the spread of monopolistic competition in large scale industries. However, it was the incursion of interventionist regulations that was viewed as the crucial factor in endangering markets, thus fueling an ever more pressing mismatch between economic and political domains in increasingly fragile market societies. their ensuing decomposition would be paralleled by the rise of authoritarian forces with potentially market adverse agendas.

Dr. Alexander Ebner, is Chair of Political Economy and economic Sociology at Goethe University in Frankfurt. His areas of interests include the domains of entrepreneurship and innovation, comparative capitalism and the history of economic thought.