Economist
David L. Prychitko (born June 22, 1962) is an American economist of the Austrian School. Prychitko is a critic of Marxism,[1] but defends the idea of workers' self-managed firms in a freed market system. Prychitko is a tenured professor at Northern Michigan University.[2]
Early life and education
Prychitko was born in Evergreen Park, Illinois to Harry and Joanne Prychitko. He is of Ukrainian and Italian descent. He was raised in Worth, Illinois, and is a 1980 graduate of Alan Shepard High School in Palos Heights, Illinois. He remained in Worth until he moved to Michigan to attend Northern Michigan University in Marquette, a small city in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. After completing his B.S. in Economics (1984), Prychitko attended George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where he earned an M.A. (1987) and a Ph.D. (1989) in economics. At George Mason he was a student of Kenneth Boulding, James Buchanan, Don Lavoie, and Thelma Z. Lavine. Lavoie chaired Prychitko's dissertation committee. Michael Alexeev, Jack High, and Karen I. Vaughn served as the economists on the committee, and Tom Burns, a sociologist, served as the "outside the discipline" committee member.
Before completing his Ph.D., Prychitko was also a junior fellow in the program on participation and labor-managed systems in the department of economics at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York (1988). He finished writing his dissertation research there, with some influence under the program's director, Jaroslav Vaněk.
Professional history
After receiving his doctorate, Prychitko conducted post-doctoral research on a Fulbright Grant in the Philosophical Faculty at the University of Zagreb, in Zagreb, Croatia (1989). While there he had also participated in several courses at the Inter-University Centre of Postgraduate Studies in Dubrovnik, Croatia, including Political Theory and Political Education—Anarchism: Community and Utopia. That course was celebrated as the first gathering in Yugoslavia of scholars of anarchism in forty or more years. During his stay at the Inter-University Centre, Prychitko also critically discussed the theory and practice of workers' self-managed socialism with several members of the Yugoslav Praxis School, including Zagorka Golubovic, Mihailo Markovic, Svetozar Stojanovic, and Rudi Supek.
After his return from Yugoslavia, Prychitko served as a faculty member in the department of economics at the State University of New York at Oswego, in Oswego, New York (1989–1997). During that time, he participated as a summer fellow in the faculty seminar on economy, values, and culture, at the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture, Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts (1992), a program directed by the noted sociologist, Peter Berger.
Prychitko was also a faculty affiliate in the program in philosophy, politics, and economics of the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy, George Mason University (2001–2004). Additionally, he held the Cecil and Ida Green Chair in Economics at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas (2003–2004). Prychitko has been a faculty member in the department of economics at Northern Michigan University since 1997.[3]
Non-professionally, Prychitko was a college-radio blues disc jockey for several years, a volunteer position he held at radio stations WNYO in Oswego, New York and WUPX in Marquette, Michigan. He has since become a devotee of old-time fiddle music, and is one of a handful of Appalachian-style fiddlers in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
He lives in Marquette, Michigan with his wife Julie. They have four children, Sonja, Emily, Anthony, and Anna.
