Don Lavoie, Date of Birth, Date of Death
TweetDon Lavoie
American economist
Date of Birth: 04-Apr-1951
Date of Death: 06-Nov-2001
Profession: economist
Nationality: United States
Zodiac Sign: Aries 
About Don Lavoie
- Donald Charles "Don" Lavoie (April 4, 1951 – November 6, 2001) was an Austrian school economist.
- He was influenced by Friedrich Hayek, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Michael Polanyi and Ludwig Lachmann.
- He wrote two books on the problem of economic calculation.
- His first book on this subject was Rivalry and Central Planning (Cambridge University Press 1985).
- This book stressed the importance of the process of competitive rivalry in markets.
- His second book was National Economic Planning: What Is Left? (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1985).
- This book dealt with the problem of non-comprehensive planning. Among his students, there are a number of "contemporary Austrian" economists: Peter Boettke, David Prychitko, Steven Horwitz, Thomas Rustici, Mark Gilbert, 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.
- He also worked at the Cato Institute. Lavoie was awarded a Ph.
- D.
- in economics from New York University in 1981 for thesis entitled Rivalry and central planning : a re-examination of the debate over economic calculation under socialism under Israel Kirzner.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).
- Along with Richard Ebeling, Lavoie pioneered the attempt to merge Austrian Economics with philosophical hermeneutics in the late 1980s, and in particular with the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer.
- His influence here extended to many of his students mentioned above.
- His effort drew criticism from several members of the Austrian School associated with the Mises Institute, especially Murray Rothbard and Hans-Hermann Hoppe. 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. Lavoie was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the spring of 2001.
- He died of a stroke later that year.
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