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Guest Lecture: Can friendships survive contact with the market? by Ginny Choi of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University

December 4

Guest Lecture: Can friendships survive contact with the market? - Ginny Choi of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University

Date: Tuesday, December 4, 2018
Location: Beck Hall 101
Time: 4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m

Ginny Choi is an Associate Director of Academic & Student Programs and a Senior Fellow in F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, and a Senior Research Fellow at The Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She specializes in Austrian and experimental economics. Her research primarily focuses on the moral and social aspects of markets. She is currently writing a book titled A Moral Case for Markets with Virgil H. Storr (George Mason University). Choi earned her Ph.D. in Economics from George Mason University (Fairfax, VA), M.A. in Economics from New York University (New York, NY) and B.A. in Economics from Emory University (Atlanta, GA).

Can friendships survive contact with the market? - Critics of markets have often asserted that markets undermine morality and that market dealings are unfair and corrupting. In their perspective, the expansion of the market and market values taint the nature of the goods being exchanged and the relationships between the parties to the deal. This chapter gives reasons to suspect this critique of markets and attempts to push back against these complaints. It argues that the market is a social arena where individuals not only pursue their material goals but also exercise their moral selves; after all, meaningful social bonds characterized by trust and trustworthiness can and do develop in market settings. The market depends on and promotes trust and trustworthiness as well as fairness and reciprocity and these values, as suggested by experimental economic evidence, play important roles in successful market exchanges.