09-17-2025
In the 1800s, Alphonse Karr reminded us that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” We’re witnessing big changes in the structure and nature of the global economy right now, politically and with the introduction of artificial intelligence. Science and industrialization wrought big changes back in the 1800s and early 1900s, as well.
Perhaps we should look back to the wisdom of the early economic theorists to see what we can learn from their big ideas during times of rapid and massive change. We should ask how we can apply those big ideas to better understand what we face today.
A group of smart, ambitious, scholarship-winning Economic Scholars is doing just that with me this fall in my course, ECON 286: Real Property, Debt, Rent, and Taxes – Who Pays What and Why? The class begins this evening and I couldn’t be more thrilled. We’re going to read original theses about these topics from our intellectual forefathers, discuss classical economic theories, humanize them with a little literature, and debate their usefulness today via a Harkness-style discussion over dinner. As professor for this course, I almost have to pinch myself. When I agreed to be a Business Fellow, I didn’t imagine it would lead to something this, well, cool.
The Daniels School’s Purdue University Research Center in Economics launched and coordinates the Economic Scholars Program. This unique class exemplifies the business school’s dedication to close study of transformative texts written by great thinkers and encourages in-depth discussion in a small group setting.
This semester, we’re going to read a highly curated syllabus that includes Locke, Ricardo, Smith, and others, and we’re going to complement their works with those of Thoreau and Langston Hughes, Shakespeare and Alexander Hamilton. Students will grapple with concepts that sit at the core of how we, as a nation, choose to organize economically. They’ll sweat these ideas to learn how to use them to identify opportunity for profit and how they might walk us into moral pitfalls.
These class sessions might encourage the students’ zeal for our free market capitalism, or they might plant seeds of doubt. They might encourage our scholars to create better, more powerful theories of economic organization. They also might be a lot of fun. I can think of few better ways to spend these eight evenings this fall. Boiler Up, scholars. And readers, if you would like to pose a question to the class about these topics, send it to me. I can’t promise a response to all, but I’ll do my best.
Charles Stucke is a Daniels School Business Fellow in Global Family Office and Wealth Management. He is a CFA and adjunct lecturer at Washington University’s Olin Business School in St. Louis, where he teaches hedge fund strategies, wealth and family office management, and real estate finance to master’s students.
