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GINNY SEUNG CHOI

Senior Fellow, F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Studies in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics
Senior Program Director, Academic & Student Programs, Mercatus Center
Senior Research Fellow, Mercatus Center

Ginny Choi is a Senior Program Director of Academic & Student Programs, a Senior Fellow with the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She holds a PhD in Economics from George Mason University (Fairfax, VA, USA), an MA in Economics from New York University (New York, NY, USA), and a BA in Economics from Emory University (Atlanta, GA, USA). She has also attended the General Course at the London School of Economics and Political Science (London, UK).

Ginny specializes in Austrian and experimental economics, with a particular focus on the moral and social aspects of markets. Do Markets Corrupt Our Morals? (with Virgil Storr), published by Palgrave Macmillan (2019), explores whether or not engaging in market activities is morally corrupting and invites us to reassess the claim that markets corrupt our morals. Her work in political economy has been published in academic journals and other scholarly outlets, including PLOS ONE, Journal of Institutional Economics, Public Choice, Social Philosophy & Policy, and Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.

Before joining Mercatus, Ginny was an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Alex G. McKenna School of Business, Economics and Government at Saint Vincent College (Latrobe, PA, USA). Originally from South Korea, she spent most of her formative years in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Publications

Updated October 2023

Books & Edited Volumes

Journal Articles & Contributions to Books

• “The morality of markets in theory and empirics” (with Virgil H. Storr), Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Forthcoming.
• “The strength of market friendships” (with Virgil H. Storr), The Oxford Handbook of Private Enterprise, ed. Edward Stringham (Oxford University Press, Forthcoming)
• “Human capital, human flourishing, and the moral desirability of market arrangements” (with Virgil H. Storr), Social Philosophy & Policy, Forthcoming.
• “Who wins in the game of the market?” (with Virgil H. Storr), Review of Austrian Economics (2023)
• “The social and moral aspects of markets” (with Virgil H. Storr), Modern Guide to Austrian Economics, ed. Per Bylund (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2022)
• “The market as a process for the discovery of whom not to trust” (with Virgil H. Storr), Journal of Institutional Economics, 2022.
• “A Framework for Understanding Culture, Sociality and Morality in Mainline Political Economy” (with Paul D. Aligica and Virgil H. Storr), Culture, Sociality, and Morality: New Applications of Mainline Political Economy, eds. Paul D. Aligica, Ginny S. Choi and Virgil H. Storr (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021)
• “Clientelism and identity” (with James Habyarimana, Daniel Houser, Stuti Khemani, Viktor Brech, and Moumita Roy), Economic and Political Studies, 2020.
• “Growing up in the market: The character traits that markets reward and punish” (with Virgil H. Storr), The Impact of the Market: On Character Formation, Ethical Education and the Communication of Values in the Late Modern Pluralistic Societies, eds. Jurgen von Hagen, Michael Welker, John Witte and Stephen Pickard Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt GmbH, 2020.
• “Measuring Markets and Morality” (with Virgil H. Storr), Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics, 2020.
• “Market interactions, trust and reciprocity” (with Virgil H. Storr), PLoS ONE, 2020.
• “A culture of rent seeking” (with Virgil H. Storr), Public Choice, 2019.
• “Market institutions and the evolution of culture” (with Virgil H. Storr), Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, 2018.
• “Markets as moral training grounds” (with Virgil H. Storr) in Annual Proceedings of the Wealth and Well-Being of Nations, ed. Warren Palmer. Beloit: Beloit College Press, 2017.
• “Can trust, reciprocity and friendship survive contact with the market?” (with Virgil H. Storr) in Economics and the Virtues: Building a New Moral Foundation, eds. Jennifer A. Baker and Mark D. White. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Selected Current Projects

Books

Do Markets Corrupt Our Morals? Second Edition (with Virgil H. Storr), under contract with Palgrave Macmillan
Market Friendships: Exploring the Social Life of Markets (with Virgil H. Storr), under contract with Cambridge University Press.

Journal Articles & Contributions to Books

“The dark side of market friendships” (with Virgil H. Storr)