Pierre Lemieux (economist)

Pierre Lemieux is an economist and author born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada in 1947. He holds graduate degrees in economics from the University of Toronto (Canada), and in Philosophy from Université de Sherbrooke (Canada). His research interests and fields of publication straddle economic and political theory, public choice, public finance, and public policy. He lives in the U.S.

Career

After having lectured in several universities, he is currently affiliated (as a “professeur associé”) to the Department of Management Sciences at the University of Québec in Outaouais. He is also currently a Senior Fellow at the Montreal Economic Institute. During the winter of 2009-2010, he was a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Economics at San Jose State University, San Jose CA.

He has been a columnist for the Western Standard (both paper and on-line) and has published pieces in several financial newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the National Post, and the 'Figaro Économie, and La Tribune.[1]

He was the founder and, for a few years, the co-director of the “Iconoclastes” book series at Les Belles Lettres in Paris.The Times Literary Supplement wrote: "They order this matter better in France, perhaps. 'Iconoclastes' is an attractively stubby series published by Les Belles lettres."[2]

He has also been an occasional consultant for a few national and international corporations.

Ideas

His first books, published in Paris in the 1980s, were on the economics and political philosophy of anarcho-capitalism and classical liberalism: Du libéralisme à l’anarcho capitalisme (From Liberalism to Anarcho-Capitalism), La souveraineté de l’individu (The Sovereignty of the Individual), and L’anarcho-capitalisme (Anarcho-Capitalism). He was among the very first ones to bring libertarian ideas to French readers, rediscovering at the same time a forgotten French classical liberal tradition. In these works, he defended the idea that anarcho-capitalism is the ideal, of which classical liberalism is an implementation. "The public domain," he wrote in Du libéralisme à l'anarcho-capitalisme, "is only justifiable to the extent that it supports private liberty; the role of the state is to protect anarchy." In the 2006 preface to the electronic edition of L’anarcho-capitalisme (published in the Classiques des sciences sociales), he stresses more the classical liberal or minimal-government alternative. "At the dawn of the 21st century," he asks, "isn't it more important to understands how Leviathan advances and how to chain him, than to theorize on the ideal of total liberty?"

Some of the books that immediately followed were essays or advocacy books more concerned with public policy problems. Published in the early 1990s in Paris were Apologie des sorcières modernes (Apology of Modern Witches), in defense of insider trading, and Le droit de porter des armes (The Right to Keep and Bear Arms), in defense of this right. In the late 1990, he published, in Montréal, a little book, in both an English and French version, in favor of the liberty to smoke tobacco: Smoking and Liberty: Government as a Public Health Problem. In the early 2000s, he published, in Montréal, a more literary book relating his personal fight with the Canadian firearm-controls bureaucracy, Confessions d’un coureur des bois hors-la-loi (Confessions of an Outlaw Coureur des Bois).

His 2008 book Comprendre l’économie. Ou comment les économistes pensent (Understanding Economics: Or How Economists Think), published at the Belles Lettres in Paris, is an introduction to economics for the layman. The book was awarded a Turgot Prize.[3]

In another book published at Les Belles Lettres (Paris) in 2009, Une crise peut en cacher une autre, Pierre Lemieux argued that the 2007-2009 economic crisis, far from being an effect of laissez-faire, was a consequence of mounting state intervention.

In Somebody in Charge: A Solution to Recessions (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), he presented similar ideas. Professor John P. Cochran wrote: "With this foundation established, Lemieux proceeds to make the case that the root of the crisis lay not in greed and self-interest running amok in unhampered markets, but in the policy and regulatory structure that created and enabled the excessive leverage and risk taking. ... If this book were widely read in and out of classrooms, it might be very useful in awaking more of the public to the fact that we do not need somebody in charge."[4] In an jacket endorsement for the book, Charles Calomiris, professor of Financial Institutions at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business, wrote: "Lemieux argues that the government's clumsy and ill-considered attempts to control market outcomes have often been at the heart of economic instability, and that the recent subprime crisis is a telling example of the costs of risky interventionism into the financial system. People who find that argument surprising may be even more surprised by how much their horizons will be broadened by reading this book."

In 2013, he published The Public Debt Problem: A Comprehensive Guide (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), where he analyzes the public debt problem, especially with reference to the United States but with many European comparisons. He argues that the problem is serious and that only default or dramatic reductions in public expenditures are acceptable solutions.

His latest book is Who Needs Jobs? Spreading Poverty or Increasing Welfare (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). He argues that "[i]n a very real sense, jobs don't matter" (p. 170) because people work to consume not the other way around.

Published books

Some of his earlier, out-of-print books have been reproduced in electronic format in the Classiques des sciences sociales (Classics of the Social Sciences).

Other publications

Pierre Lemieux has published a number of academic articles and several op-eds. His academic articles include:

He was also co-translator of two books:

He is a frequent contributor to Regulation.

References

  1. ↑ See for example http://www.latribune.fr/opinions/tribunes/20120319trib000689070/newt-gingrich-va-a-l-essence-du-probleme.html
  2. ↑ Times Literary Supplement, June 7, 1991.
  3. ↑ "Le professeur Pierre Lemieux obtient un Prix Turgot pour son livre Comprendre l'économie," press release from the Université du Québec en Outaouais, January 25, 2009.
  4. ↑ John P. Cochran, "A Crisis of Authority: Pierre Lemieux's Somebody in Charge: A Solution to Recessions?, The Independent Review, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Spring 2012), pp. 591-598.

External links

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