A Conversation Between Deirdre McCloskey and Don Boudreaux on 'Bourgeois Equality'

Is our modern world the product of changing institutions or the result of shifting opinions about them? At a recent event hosted by the Hayek Program, Don Boudreaux and Deidre McCloskey explored this question in a fascinating discussion on the latest installment of Professor McCloskey’s Bourgeois Era Trilogy, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World (University of Chicago Press, 2016). This new volume challenges conventional wisdom about the causes of the wealth of nations and builds a powerful case for the initiating role of ideas – the liberal ideas of equal liberty and dignity for ordinary folk – in creating the Great Enrichment from 1800 to today.