Menard Family George Washington Forum hosts talk on Meaningful Economics on Sept. 20

The Menard Family George Washington Forum will host Bart J. Wilson for a discussion on "Meaningful Economics" on Sept. 20, at 6 p.m. in the Baker University Center Theater.

Wilson is a professor of economics and law and the Donald P. Kennedy Endowed Chair in Economics and Law at Chapman University. He is a member of the Economic Science Institute and tenured in the Argyros School of Business and Economics and the Fowler School of Law. In Fall 2016, he co-founded with Jan Osborn (English), Vernon Smith (economics and law), and Keith Hankins (philosophy) the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy, for which he serves as the director.

"Bart’s work hearkens to early thinkers in political economy and is a reminder that the human condition is far more than utility/profit maximization. At our core we care deeply about purpose, justice, beauty, happiness, virtue, friendship, love, and much more. Therefore, to understand human behavior, we must do more than observe actions. We must also understand context, sociality, and the meaning that we import in our interactions with those around us. His goal as a scholar and teacher is to bring humanity back to economics," said Cortney Rodet, director of the George Washington Forum and associate professor of economics in the College of Arts and Sciences at Ohio University.

Wilson has published papers widely in economics and general science journals, including the American Economic Review, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Scientific Reports, and Nature Human Behaviour. His research has been supported with grants from the National Science Foundation, the Federal Trade Commission, and the International Foundation for Research in Experimental Economics. Wilson's undergraduate teaching supports the Humanomics minor at upper division level and Chapman’s First-Year Foundations Course at the lower division. He also teaches a seminar for law school students on spontaneous order and the law.

Prior to joining the faculty at Chapman, he was an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and before that a research scientist at the Economic Science Laboratory at the University of Arizona. He started his professional career as an economist at the Federal Trade Commission. Wilson received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Arizona and his B.S. in Economics and Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. He hails from the great state of Wisconsin.

This event is free and open to the public.