My research interests lie at the intersections between political economy, intellectual history and economic- and political history. I did my PhD in History and Civilisation at the European University Institute from 2013 to 2017, with a thesis in intellectual micro-history on early neoliberalism. It won the History of Economics Society annual dissertation prize and was published as the book Reinventing Liberalism - The Politics, Philosophy and Economics of Early Neoliberalism (1920 - 1947) by Springer in 2020. After finishing my PhD I wrote and published a monograph in Norwegian on the history of market reforms in Norway, entitled Markedsvendingen - Nyliberalismens historie i Norge (Fagbokforlaget, 2020).
I am currently working on a project related to the role of the Norwegian state as the largest owner in publicly listed companies. I am interested in everything that has to do with the relationships between markets and politics, the economy and the state, capitalism and democracy. I am also one of the editors of the litterature journal Vinduet,and I have previously published two novels.
In 1944, Friedrich Hayek gave a lecture at Stanford University where he referred to the organization he was planning to set up as “an army of fighters for freedom”. This article investigates the social environment of “Hayek’s army” by looking specifically at the founding conference of the Mont-Pèlerin Society, some three years later. An exploration of this famous 10-day conference in the Swiss Alps shows that the transnational group of neoliberal thinkers was characterized by social privilege, something that contributes to contextualising their rightleaning political views. Several of the American conference attendees hailed from more modest backgrounds than their European counter parts, however, and the views on display during the conference were far from uniform. This was especially the case when discussions centred on redistribution and poverty, where, to widespread criticism, Milton Friedman presented his famous proposal for a negative income tax.
Innset, Ola (2020)
Markedsvendingen. Nyliberalismens historie i Norge
Fagbokforlaget.
Innset, Ola (2020)
Reinventing Liberalism. The Politics, Philosophy and Economics of Early Neoliberalism (1920 - 1947)
Springer.
Aven, Håvard Brede & Innset, Ola (2018)
Konservatisme, nyliberalisme og statsdrift. Høyres syn på statseid industri 1945–1981
Det har blitt hevdet at Høyres økonomiske politikk i etterkrigsårene stort sett bestod i å «stabbe imot» men la seg trekke med av Arbeiderpartiets økonomiske politikk. I denne artikkelen viser vi imidlertid at Høyre aktivt støttet statseid industri i flere tilfeller, og at Høyre formulerte begrunnelser for dette i tråd med sine konservative idealer. Dette beviser dermed ikke floskelen om at «alle nordmenn er sosialdemokrater», men forteller oss isteden noe om hvordan merkelapper som «konservativ» og «sosialdemokratisk» er sterkt foranderlige. I etterkrigsårene var det høyst uklart for de fleste hva en konservativ økonomisk politikk egentlig innebar, og denne artikkelen kontrasterer og sammenligner Høyres forsøk på å definere dette med den samtidige utviklingen av nyliberalisme som et transnasjonalt politisk prosjekt. De tidlige nyliberalistene ønsket en sterk stat for å legge til rette for markedsmekanismer, noe som eksemplifiserer hvordan bildet av økonomisk politikk som en pendel mellom stat og markeder er forenklende og tidvis misvisende.
Innset, Ola (2017)
Markets, Knowledge and Human Nature: Friedrich Hayek, Karl Polanyi and Twentieth-century Debates on Modern Social Order
Metahistory as Public History: On Introducing Metahistorical Perspectives in Events about Events
History: The Journal of the Historical Association, s. 392- 407. Doi: 10.1111/1468-229X.13265
This article argues that the introduction of ‘metahistorical perspectives’ can greatly enrich the practice of public history. Through the example of a series of public events about important historical events held at the National Library of Norway, it is argued that an attention to microhistory, pedagogical theory and especially William Sewell Jr.’s theory of events can be beneficial when programming events for the general public. This focus on ‘metahistorical perspectives’ in the practice of public history stands in contrast to widely held notions of public history as entailing simplifications and ‘dumbing down’ of academic knowledge.
Innset, Ola (2020)
Review of Janek Wasserman’s The Marginal Revolutionaries: How Austrian Economists Fought the War of Ideas. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019, 354 pp.