Program to Examine Why Free Markets Flourish in Some Parts of the World, But Not in Others

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- What is the key to economic development? Many countries are unable to create thriving free-market economies, but it is not due to lack of hard work or entrepreneurial talent, say top social scientists and philosophers. Nor is it because of the lack of accumulated wealth in the form of physical assets and skills.

What holds them back, they say, is that these countries do not have an invisible network of laws and institutions that can turn "dead" assets into "liquid" capital and bring black-market activities out into the light of day.

Writers and researchers from the fields of philosophy, economics, geography, geoinformation, psychology and other disciplines will gather at the University at Buffalo on April 12-15 for a multidisciplinary workshop, "The Mystery of Capital and the Construction of Social Reality," at which they will discuss ways of drawing underdeveloped countries into the arena of capitalist development.

The event, funded in part by the National Science Foundation, will be the first time internationally distinguished thinkers Hernando de Soto and John Searle have appeared together in a public forum. They each will present a keynote address that is open to the public -- de Soto at 4 p.m. on April 12, and Searle at 4:30 p.m. on April 14.

De Soto is president of Peru's Institute for Liberty and Democracy, one of the world's most important think tanks on development issues. Searle is a noted author and Mills Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

Breakout sessions, lectures and panels will address the construction of Western reality; the mystery of human capital, its allocation and misallocation; poverty and property rights in the developing world; the changing nature of property; the institutionalization of property rights, and related topics.

All events will take place in the University Inn and Conference Center, 2401 North Forest Road, Getzville, adjacent to the UB North (Amherst) Campus. The registration deadline is April 4.

Pre-registration is required for all parts of the program aside from the keynote talks. There is no registration cost, but attendees will be asked to pay a nominal fee to defray the cost of meals. For further information or to pre-register, call the Department of Philosophy in the UB College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) at 716-645-2444, ext. 135.

Barry Smith, Julian Park Professor of Philosophy and co-convener of the workshop, describes de Soto as having done more than anyone else to convince governments throughout the world that a new approach to laws and property is needed to unleash the forces of free-market capitalism.

"His policy proposals," says Smith, "turn on finding ways in which capitalism can be unleashed in developing societies. His particular interest is in the development and implementation of strategies to bring informal enterprises and property ownership into the economic mainstream in developing countries."

Smith says Searle is known in particular for his examination of ways in which laws and institutions grow out of the beliefs and habits of individuals in society.

"Both de Soto and Searle argue that an understanding of how society is structured can have profound implications for social, economic and political development," says Smith.

"In the West," he adds, "standardized laws allow us to mortgage a house to raise money for a new venture; they permit the worth of a company to be broken up into so many publicly tradable stocks, and make it possible to govern and appraise property with agreed-upon rules that hold across neighborhoods, towns or regions."

Smith claims that this invisible infrastructure of "asset management" is taken for granted in the West, although it has existed in the U.S. only within the past century.

"But it is this infrastructure, more than anything else," he says, "that for many nations is the missing ingredient for success with capitalism."

De Soto is an influential author of best-selling books on economic policy and development, and one of the most influential thinkers in the field.

He has worked as an advisor to governments throughout Latin America and, most recently, in Russia and the Middle East. His most recent book is "The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Succeeds in the West and Fails Everywhere Else."

According to his publisher, Searle is a man "who likes a good philosophical brawl." Searle claims that, whether we know it or not, "philosophical theories make a tremendous difference to every aspect of our lives." He has written a multitude of scholarly articles, as well as 10 books in which he addresses such subjects as the relationship between consciousness and the brain and how expression and meaning constitute truth or untruth.

His books include "Speech Acts," "Expression and Meaning," "Campus Wars," "Internationality," "The Rediscovery of the Mind," "The Construction of Social Reality" and "Minds, Brains and Science," based on his acclaimed 1984 BBC Reith Lectures. His works have been published in 20 languages.

Other participants in the workshop include Philippe Nemo, professor of social and political sciences and scientific director at the Center for Research in Economic Philosophy in the European Graduate School of Management (Paris, France); Andrew Frank, professor of geoinformation at the Technical University of Vienna (Austria); Franco Gil-White, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and Erik Stubkjaer, professor of cadastral science at Aalborg University (Denmark).

In addition to Smith, UB faculty members who will participate are David Koepsell, adjunct assistant professor of philosophy; Errol Meidinger, professor of law; Serguey Branuinsky, visiting associate professor in the Department of Economics in the CAS, and Isaac Ehrlich, SUNY Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of Economics in the CAS.

The event will be co-hosted by UB's National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis and UB's departments of Philosophy, Geography and Economics.

Other sponsors of the event are the SUNY Conversations in the Disciplines and the CAS Dean's Office, its multi-departmental IGERT Program in Geographic Information Science, and the Marvin Farber Memorial Fund in the Department of Philosophy.