Don Lavoie
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Don C. Lavoie (April 4, 1951 - November 6, 2001) was an Austrian school economist. He worked at the Cato Institute. He wrote a book entitled National Economic Planning: What Is Left? (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1985). He was influenced by Friedrich Hayek, Michael Polanyi and Ludwig Lachmann.
Among his students, there are a number of "contemporary Austrian" economists: Peter Boettke, David Prychitko, Steve Horwitz, Ralph Rector, Emily Chamlee-Wright, Howie Baetjer and Virgil Storr.
Don Lavoie was co-founder of the interdisciplinary unit known as the Program on Social & Organizational Learning at George Mason University which offers a Master's degree in Organizational Learning.
As a scholar, he studied the philosophy of the social sciences (especially the application of hermeneutics to economics) and Comparative Economic Systems (especially Marxian theories of socialism).
As a young professor, he worked on the philosophy and practice of electronically-mediated discourse. He knew the importance for organizations of new ways of cultivating interactive learning environments (groupware and hypertext software environments) in order to enhance communicative processes. He showed the fundamental nature of social learning processes, whether in market exchanges, in verbal conversations, or in hypertext-based dialogue.
In the book Culture and Enterprise: The Development, Representation and Morality of Business (New York: Routledge, 2000) written with Emily Chamlee-Wright, they take into account the important role of culture in a nation's economic development.
