Lecture Description:

While free trade has been increasingly maligned, The Fair Trade movement has become increasingly popular over the last several years and many see it as a way to help people in the developing world and as a more just alternative to free trade--which many argue creates an unfair advantage that tends to harm the poor.  This course will analyze and compare arguments for and against both fair trade and free trade and ask whether 'fair trade' is either more fair or more just than free trade.

Speaker Biography:

Dr. Victor V. Claar (Ph.D., West Virginia University) is a professor of economics at Henderson, the public liberal arts college of Arkansas, where he specializes in teaching principles of economics courses. He is also coauthor of Economics in Christian Perspective: Theory, Policy and Life Choices. Prior to arriving at Henderson, he was an associate professor, for nine years at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. He spent the 2006-07 academic year as a Fulbright scholar, giving graduate lectures and conducting research at the American University of Armenia. His research interests include transnational entrepreneurial attitudes, ethics and economics, and applied microeconomics. He has written articles for Applied Economics, Public Finance Review and the Journal of Markets & Morality, among others. Dr. Claar recently wrote a book on fair trade for the Acton Institute, entitled Fair Trade? Its Prospects as a Poverty Solution.