095: Scott Burns on Mobile Money Banking in Africa and the Success of M-Pesa

Scott Burns is a Mercatus PhD Dissertation Fellow in the Economics PhD Program at George Mason University.

Scott earned his BS in Economics from Louisiana State University where he was part of the Speech and Debate Club and the Phi Eta Sigma Honors Society.

His current publications include The War on Drugs in Afghanistan: Another Failed Experiment in Interdiction and Old (Chicago) school, new century: the link between Knight and Simons’ Chicago plan to Buchanan’s constitutional money.

Scott’s PhD dissertation topic has to do with one of the most exciting yet under-appreciated miracles of the market going on in the world today, the “mobile money revolution” in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Scott writes for the blog Alt-M, which is a blog run by free banking scholars on the theme ‘Ideas for an Alternative Monetary Future’.

Scott, along with fellow Econ PhD student at GMU, David Lucas, started a band inspired by Adam Smith called ‘The Butcher and the Baker’.

Economics:

In this episode, Scott mentions: banking, monopolies, natural monopoly, market failure, savings, investment, development economics, finance, GDP, laissez-faire, mobile money, unintended consequences, bitcoins and hyper-inflation.

Economists:

In this episode, Scott mentions: Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, Joseph Schumpeter, Scott Sumner, David Beckworth, Lawrence H. White and George A. Selgin,

Links:

• Finance for All: Kenya’s M-PESA
• Alt-M
• Top 12 Economics Books as Recommended by Economic Rockstar Guests
• Monetary Workshop at Cato Institute

Papers:

• Coyne, C., Hall-Blanco , A. and Burns, S. (2016). The War on Drugs in Afghanistan: Another Failed Experiment with Interdiction. The Independent Review.
• Burns, S. (2016). Old (Chicago) school, new century: the link between Knight and Simons’ Chicago plan to Buchanan’s constitutional money. Constitutional Political Economy.

Articles:

• Burns, S. (2016). The Road Less Traveled: Austrian Macro, Monetary Disequilibrium Theory, and Free Banking. Research on the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Volume 348: pp 337 – 363.
• Burns, S. and Michel, N. J. (2016). Choosing Your Own Money Central to Economic Freedom. Cayman Financial Review, Issue 42.

Books:

• Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
• The Law by Frederic Bastiat
• Human Action by Ludwig von Mises
• Free Banking in Britain: Theory, Experience and Debate 1800-1845 by Lawrence H. White
• The Theory of Free Banking by George A. Selgin

Companies Mentioned in this Episode:

• Uber, Airbnb, Amazon and Safaricom.

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