The Austin Symposium is America’s premier university-based ideas festival on dynamism, entrepreneurship, inventiveness, and creativity. It features top scholars and writers with ideas about increasing dynamism in America and reversing stagnation wherever we find it. Join us for a day filled with spirited conversations, the latest research on dynamism, and a hopeful take on the future.

Agenda

8:00 – 9:15  ​​

Breakfast

9:15 – 9:30​​

Introduction

Lillian Mills, Dean of the McCombs School of Business, UT Austin

Ryan Streeter, Executive Director of the Civitas Institute, UT Austin

9:30 – 10:30​​

Deirdre McCloskey, University of Illinois at Chicago    

Lessons from the Great Enrichment

10:45 – 11:45 ​​

Ryan Decker, Federal Reserve

Recent Patterns of New Business Creation

12:00 – 1:15​​       Lunch Lecture (separate ticket required)

Introduction

Tom Wiseman, Professor and Department Chair of Economics, UT Austin

Edmund Phelps, Nobel laureate, Columbia University

Reflections on Mass Flourishing, 10 Years Later

1:30 – 2:30​​

Cass Sunstein, Harvard Law School

Sludge, Stagnation, and Dynamism

2:45 – 3:45​​

Dan Shoag, Case Western Reserve University

The Housing and Migration Challenge

4:00 – 5:00​​

Ed Glaeser, Harvard University

Dynamism and Stagnation: An Outlook

5:15 – 7:00          ​​

Cocktail Reception