Ratio dialogue with Mary O’Sullivan, Professor at the University of Geneva

The Eli F. Heckscher lecture of 2019 was held by Mary O’Sullivan, Professor of Economic History and Director of the Department of History, Economics and Society at University of Geneva. The title of her keynote lecture was ”The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Capitalism”.

During professor O’Sullivan’s visit, she also participated in a Ratio dialogue. You can watch the entire video here.

Why is it that capitalism is a concept that seems as capricious and elusive as the world it evokes? O’Sullivan argues that capital has been written out of the history of economic life—with devastating effect for any serious consideration of the role and rewards of capital in contemporary and past societies. She therefore makes a proposal for a more historical approach to guiding economic thinking about capital, and what it means for capitalism, in a direction that might prove more satisfying to the intelligent woman. Her latest article, “The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Capitalism”, Enterprise & Society (December 2018), shares its title with this year’s Heckscher lecture, and is an ironic nod to The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, published in 1928 by George Bernard Shaw.