Alexander Schaefer

Alex Schaefer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and a Murphy Core Faculty member in the Murphy Institute’s Center for Ethics. He works at the intersection of philosophy, politics, and economics, with research spanning social and political philosophy, political economy, and the history of political and economic thought. He earned his PhD in Philosophy, with a doctoral minor in economic theory, from the University of Arizona, and previously held positions at SUNY Buffalo and New York University. His work has appeared in journals including the American Journal of Political Science, Economics and Philosophy, Synthese, Philosophy of Science, and The Philosophical Quarterly. His current research applies formal methods to questions about the evolution and stability of social and moral institutions.

Selected Publications

Matthew Jeffers and Alexander Schaefer, “The Function of Hypocrisy Norms,” Utilitas, Volume 37, Issue 2, pp. 123–140 (2025).
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/utilitas/article/function-of-hypocrisy-norms/26B17A232FC9FCAE19A76818A0B27DF5

Otto Lehto and Alexander Schaefer, “When Less Is More: A Defense of Narrow, Humean Justice,” Journal of Moral Philosophy (2025).
https://brill.com/view/journals/jmp/aop/article-10.1163-17455243-20254543/article-10.1163-17455243-20254543.xml

Jordan Lofthouse and Alexander Schaefer, “Expert knowledge and the administrative state,” Public Choice, Volume 202, pp. 433–454 (2025).
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11127-024-01228-3

Alexander Schaefer, “Polycentricity and adaptation: A multilevel selectionist approach,” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Volume 210, pp. 265–87 (2023). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167268123001099?via%3Dihub

Mario Juarez-Garcia and Alexander Schaefer, “Exit & isolation: Rousseau’s state of nature,” Synthese, Volume 200, article number 252 (2022).
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-022-03736-5

Alexander Schaefer, “Hayek’s twin ideas: reconciling methodological individualism and group selection,” Cambridge Journal of Economics, Volume 45, Issue 6, pp. 1209–1226 (2021).
https://academic.oup.com/cje/article-abstract/45/6/1209/6352830?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Alexander Schaefer, “Is Justice a Fixed Point?” American Journal of Political Science, Volume 67, Issue 2, pp. 277–290 (2021).
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajps.12631