America’s Robber Barons: Saints or Sinners? (Apr. 16)

Were America’s ”robber barons” villains or visionaries? We will examine the titans of the Gilded Age—Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Morgan, and others. Economists and historians often reach strikingly different conclusions about these historical figures. Were they rent-seeking monopolists or amazing economic innovators? Did they induce creative destruction and economic growth or simply generate private fortunes? Can we separate the distributional consequences of the Gilded Age from its positive growth effects? Can we reach any conclusions about whether their net effect was good or bad?

Dennis Sheehan, Ph.D., is professor emeritus of finance at the Penn State University Smeal College of Business. He previously taught in the business schools at Purdue University, the University of Chicago and the University of Rochester. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Georgetown University and received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley. Dennis is happily retired in his hometown of Newport.