When talking with non-Austrians, they often ask me what I think of other economists outside the tradition. Often, the discussion ends up with them asking me, "Do you think there have been any good insights outside the Austrian tradition?" In particular, Paul Samuelson is brought up as someone who my econ major friends admire. Not having read his textbook, are there any insights he had or elaborated on that Austrians would give him credit for, especially ones Austrians had not previously elaborated?
I'd give him a complete zero(assuming negative marking is done away), since he supported the Soviet Union, and even predicted that it would be the world's top economy in 2015. Any economist who supports a centrally planned economy could be safely assumed to be either ignorant of the significance of the pricing system, or intellectually dishonest. Samuelson must be either one of these, or both.
I think there are plenty of economists outside the Austrian tradition from whom Austrians can draw insights, that said, I think Samuelson would probably one of the last I'd name. Samuelson is definately a gifted economist who is no doubt responsible for the way modern economics has developed (with the neoclassical synthesis) but I don't really he made any contributions that the Austrians could "use", so to speak. In fact, I think Garrison has said that Samuelson, along with other Keynesians took the only parts of Keynesian thought that might be interesting to Austrianism (I could be wrong on this, or just making my own intepretation).
If you're going to look for other economists who have made contributions to Austrian thought I'd say you could probably go with Yeager, Buchanan, Tullock, Hutt, Leijonhufvud, Friedman Jr, Coase, Easterly, Olson and perhaps even Friedman Sr. Of course, there's a huge number of others that I'm missing such as more modern economists (Caplan).
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