Peter Joseph Boettke (born January 3, 1960) is an American economist of the Austrian school. He is currently a professor of economics and philosophy at George Mason University; the BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism, vice president for research, and director of the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

Early life and education

Boettke was born and raised in Rahway, New Jersey, to Fred and Elinor Boettke. In high school and college, he played for the school basketball and tennis teams. He attended Thiel College in Greenville, Pennsylvania and later Grove City College in nearby Grove City, Pennsylvania. At Grove City, he became interested in economics when he took a course taught by Hans Sennholz, and there he developed his religious convictions. After completing a B.A. (1983) in economics at Grove City, Boettke attended George Mason University where he earned an M.A. (1987) and a Ph.D. (1989) in economics. His thesis was The political economy of Soviet socialism, 1918–1928 under the supervision of Don Lavoie.

Career

After receiving his doctoral degree, Boettke taught at several institutions, including Oakland University, Manhattan College and New York University. In 1998, he returned to George Mason University as a faculty member. In 2004, he was named a Hayek Fellow at the London School of Economics. He has also been a Faculty Fellow at the Charles University/Georgetown University American Institute for Political and Economic Studies in Prague and a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. He has also been made an affiliated member of the Philosophy Department at George Mason University and, in 2012, he was awarded a doctorate honoris causa in social sciences from Universidad Francisco Marroquín. In addition to his academic positions, he is vice president for research at Mercatus Center and director of the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. Until 2007, Boettke held the position of director of graduate studies for the Ph.D. program in economics at George Mason. He is the editor of George Mason University's Review of Austrian Economics and as vice president of the Mont Pelerin Society for the 2018–2020 term. He was the society's president from 2016 to 2018.

Analytical anarchism

Analytical anarchism is the name given by Boettke to the positive political economy of anarchism, or anarchism from the economic point of view, in the libertarian tradition of Murray Rothbard's For a New Liberty (1973) and David Friedman's The Machinery of Freedom (1973). Boettke claims that analytical anarchism has developed out of this tradition and is currently being pursued by economists such as Peter Leeson, Edward Stringham and Christopher Coyne.

Publications

Books Books as editor

Personal life

Boettke resides in Fairfax, Virginia, with his wife and two sons.