Tikvah hosted an alumni event in Israel last month and invited the American economic thinker Samuel Gregg to speak. Gregg described the cultural foundations of economic order, and of national prosperity. Writing in Mida, Amnon Lord sees a similarity between these comments and Mitt Romney’s somehow-controversial praise for Israel’s start-up culture in 2012. But, as Lord […]

This week, Christopher DeMuth is leading the advanced institute, “Capitalism and the Future of Democracy.” With his aid, we are focusing on the political economy of Joseph Schumpeter, Michael Novak, Irving Kristol, and Thomas Piketty, as well as looking at the political and economic options before, during, and after the 2008 financial crisis. The long-time […]

Is there an authentically Jewish view of economics? Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution argued during Tikvah’s advanced institute “Liberalism, Conservatism, and the Jews” that there is and there isn’t. As with medical care, there are technical dilemmas in economics that do not have an authentically Jewish solution, like the granular questions of monetary policy […]

As part of Tikvah’s advanced institute “Liberalism, Conservatism, and the Jews”, Tikvah’s executive director Eric Cohen offered two philosophical dilemmas for conservatives. The first is how to reconcile the tension between an economics that praises creative destruction and a preference for cultural, political, and religious continuity. The second is the dilemma of conservatism’s metaphysical roots: […]

To begin a close reading of one of Karl Marx’s most important early works, “On the Jewish Question”, Hoover Institution fellow Peter Berkowitz identified two kinds of emancipation Marx is concerned with. The first is political emancipation, or liberal democracy. But Marx sees that kind of freedom as insufficient; what is needed is “human emancipation.”

The Gospels proclaim that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, meaning Christian doctrine holds that salvation is more difficult for the wealthy man. Judaism doesn’t seem to have the same antipathy toward wealth. But wealth is […]

Is there an acceptable level of inequality for a society to maintain? This was one of the questions addressed by economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin during the course of Tikvah’s advanced institute on “The Israeli Economy: A Strategy for the Future.” As became apparent during the discussion, this a debate often mired in envy for the wealthy, […]

American Enterprise Institute scholar James Pethokoukis argues that corporations—unlike citizens who might deserve a social safety net—must be spurred by the ever-present fear of failure. Without the possibility of failure, innovation, efficiency, and growth are impossible. In many ways, crony capitalism, government protection of incumbent businesses, and other anti-competitive policies have led to the recent […]

To understand Irving Kristol’s defense and critique of capitalism, National Affairs editor Yuval Levin breaks down Kristol’s 1970 essay “‘When virtue loses all her loveliness’—some reflections on capitalism and ‘the free society’”. Kristol celebrated how capitalism offers prosperity and freedom, but reserved applause for capitalism as a stand-alone moral system. Famously, Kristol gave capitalism only two cheers, not three. […]

During our Advanced Institute, The Future of the Israeli Economy, we were honored to have Ambassador Ron Demer join us. Dermer, a close adviser for many years to Benjamin Netanyahu discussed the Prime Minister’s role in enacting free market reforms and other policies that have promoted exceptional growth. He also discussed both the moral case for capitalism and the relationship of the free market to Jewish values. Watch Ambassador Dermer’s speech to the institute participants here.