Murphy-Philosophy Seminar: Vlad Tarko (Arizona)

The Murphy Institute Seminar Series in Philosophy 

Organized by the Tulane Philosophy Department, the Murphy-Philosophy Seminars are a series of workshops where CE Faculty Fellows and distinguished guest speakers present works in progress on ethics, political philosophy, political theory, moral psychology, the philosophy of law, and intellectual history. Papers are distributed one week beforehand to the participants who read the paper and prepare discussion questions for the presenter.

Vlad Tarko is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Economy and Moral Science at University of Arizona, and the Director of Graduate Studies of the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) program. He was previously the Department Head.

Professor Tarko is currently in the process of finishing Understanding Capitalism: An Introduction to Political Economy (under contract with Polity Press), and The Allure of the Liberal Dictator (2 volumes of Cambridge Elements, under contract with Cambridge University Press), co-authored with Andrew Farrant. He is also co-editing The Elgar Companion to PPE (under contract with Elgar Publishing) with Chad Van Schoelandt (The Murphy Institute Center for Ethics and Tulane Department of Philosophy).

His latest papers cover the following topics: building an economic model of how people choose their personal identities and undergo profound transformative experiences (“Role Models” forthcoming in Public Choice); the changing dynamic of status competitions in rich societies leading to the proliferation of conflicting groups (“Polycentric Status Contests”); a synthesis of the Buchanan-Wagner perspective on the biases in public finance, leading to inefficient levels of public debt (“The politics of public finance”).