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who are your favorite economists and why?

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fakename Posted: Thu, Jul 30 2009 3:26 PM

This should be especially stimulating for people who read a lot of econ. or for people new to econ.  Perhaps Giles should drop in.

 

 

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I. Ryan replied on Thu, Jul 30 2009 4:34 PM

Mises!

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Rooster replied on Thu, Jul 30 2009 5:38 PM

I. Ryan:

Mises!

Statist! Super Angry

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Some names:

  • Ricardo (the classical system) ,
  • Smith (honorable mention for demolishing mercantilism)
  • Say (for his Law)
  • Mises (dismantling of socialism, etc.)

Austrians do it a priori

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ladyattis replied on Thu, Jul 30 2009 7:40 PM

Bohm-Bawerk for his work on production theory.

"The power of liberty going forward is in decentralization.  Not in leaders, but in decentralized activism.  In a market process." -- liberty student

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Anyone interested in the lives and works of non-Austrian economists should read a book called The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L. Heilbroner. It's a pithy classic.

Austrians do it a priori

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fakename replied on Thu, Jul 30 2009 8:49 PM

I've been reading say myself and he is good -his law is iron clad -but for the beginner, no one is as essential as turgot (for nothing else but his lucid statement that value is based on subjective preferences and not labor, the latter contention being more confusing in its applications). 

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Lilburne replied on Thu, Jul 30 2009 8:53 PM

ladyattis:

Bohm-Bawerk for his work on production theory.

Seconded.  Out of all the great Austrians, the problems he solved seemed to have been the most difficult.

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F.A. Hayek: one of the greatest business-cycle theoriest ever, created a better version of Mises' take on the calculation debate, his work on human knowledge, his political philosophizing, his work on capital theory, his amiable position in debating other economists, ect. 

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Lilburne replied on Thu, Jul 30 2009 9:27 PM

laminustacitus:
his amiable position in debating other economists, ect. 

To me, he was too amiable.  He really should have written a full refutation of Keynes.  He held back on doing that, according to his telling, because Keynes had told him personally that he was being misinterpreted by his disciples and that he would hold them back if they went too far.  I suspect it was largely academic congeniality that held back Hayek's pen.  This is a shame, because Hayek was the one man who could have knocked down Keynes' General Theory in the esteem of academia.  Without that necessary refutation from a prominent scholar (Hazlitt, as a non-academic, was ignored), Keynesianism maintained its ascent and both economic science and human society has suffered for it.  Bohm-Bawerk and Mises, in contrast, didn't hold back from refuting other economists.  Maybe the contrast stems from Hayek having personally moved to Britain, and his wanting to get on well with the scene there.  As outsiders from the British and German centers of economic thought, Bohm-Bawerk and Mises felt no peer pressure to hold back.

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Lilburne:

laminustacitus:
his amiable position in debating other economists, ect. 

To me, he was too amiable.  He really should have written a full refutation of Keynes.  He held back on doing that, according to his telling, because Keynes had told him personally that he was being misinterpreted by his disciples and that he would hold them back if they went too far.  I suspect it was largely academic congeniality that held back Hayek's pen.  This is a shame, because Hayek was the one man who could have knocked down Keynes' General Theory in the esteem of academia.  

Hayek did not refute The General Theory not because he was amiable with Keynes, a character trait that I strongly admire, but because he had already spent a year of his life refuting his Treatise on Money to have him simply say it no longer represented his beliefs, he thought that writing his own treatise on capital would have been more effective, and he did not predict how quickly Keynes' General Theory would be accepted. His amiability had little to no influence on that decision.

 

Lilburne:
 Bohm-Bawerk and Mises, in contrast, didn't hold back from refuting other economists.  Maybe the contrast stems from Hayek having personally moved to Britain, and his wanting to get on well with the scene there.  As outsiders from the British and German centers of economic thought, Bohm-Bawerk and Mises felt no peer pressure to hold back.

You completely neglect Hayek's hard battle with Keynes regarding his Treatise on Money

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Lilburne replied on Thu, Jul 30 2009 10:05 PM

laminustacitus:
You completely neglect Hayek's hard battle with Keynes regarding his Treatise on Money

Point taken, although I'm not convinced congeniality didn't play a role.  As Ralph Raico has said, Hayek was a lot more "clubbable" than Mises.  During the same meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in which Mises walked out of a meeting because of the pervasive promotion of government interventionism going on, Hayek was elected president by the assembled Chicago-ites and others.  Milton Friedman later scoffed at Mises for his obduracy, but in hindsight, given the record of Monetarist policy, I think full laissez-faire liberals ought to have rejected Chicago-ites and their like to the same extent as did Mises.

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I have read a number of works by the French economists and found Condillac to be my favorite.  Carl Menger's books have also been an excellent experience for me.  Unfortunately, he is the only Austrian economist I have seriously studied so far.  I will, however, begin Human Action next week.

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Josh replied on Thu, Jul 30 2009 10:52 PM

I'm much less well read on this stuff than most of you. I haven't delved into any books on Austrain economics, I've just done a lot of reading on the blog posts and such. Among THOSE authors, I think Robert Murphy is the best because he is the most clear writer and has a knack for taking complex concepts and making them more relatable. I think this is an important quality in an econ writer, because most people just don't get a lot of this stuff.

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Favorite economist: I , Me and Myself.   I am the best economist to take care of my personal finances Wink

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garegin replied on Thu, Jul 30 2009 11:06 PM

ranking in insight and new discoveries i would say marshall, bawerk and say. its funny how many libertarians/socialists were such shitty economics- tucker, warren, prouhdon, andrews

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Mises, just because.

To darkness I condemn you...

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Conza88 replied on Fri, Jul 31 2009 12:45 AM

Bastiat

Bohm-Bawerk

Rothbard

- Clarity.

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Mises by a mile. Human Action is possibly the most ground breaking economic text ever. Putting economics on it's proper a priori basis using methodological individualism was a massive achievement.

The atoms tell the atoms so, for I never was or will but atoms forevermore be.

Yours sincerely,

Physiocrat

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garegin replied on Fri, Jul 31 2009 9:49 AM

mises basicly stood on the shoulders of giants.

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