I first heard of Roger Garrison from Murray Rothbard. In 1973, at a social gathering of a few younger Austrian scholars and grad students in New York City, Rothbard excitedly recounted to the group the contents of a brilliant term paper he had just read involving a graphical comparison of Austrian and Keynesian macroeconomics. The paper was titled “Austrian Macroeconomics: A Diagrammatical Exposition” and its author was Roger Garrison, then an MA student. A week or two later, I received a copy of the paper in the mail. It was widely circulated among the small but growing Austrian movement and eagerly discussed and commented on over the next year. The paper deftly integrated the Keynesian cross diagram with the Hayekian structure-of-production triangle and the Rothbardian time-market graph depicting the supply of and demand for present goods. The brilliance of the paper lay in its lack of false or contrived originality; it simply used the existing analytical tools and techniques of Austrian economics to discover new truth and generate new insights into the economic process.
By the time I first met Roger in person at the Austrian Economics Conference in South Royalton, Vermont, in 1974, he already had achieved celebrity status among us younger Austrians on the strength of this unpublished paper. By the time of its publication in 1978 concurrently as a book chapter and in pamphlet form, he was widely acknowledged as one of the leaders of the younger generation of Austrians.
The reason I focus on Roger’s first paper in remembering him, is not only that it foreshadowed the creative theorizing manifested throughout his later work but because it accelerated the momentum that the Austrian economics revival gained from the South Royalton conference. At the conference, the three giants of post-Misesian Austrian economics, Murray Rothbard, Israel Kirzner, and Ludwig Lachmann, each gave a series of scintillating lectures that inspired their young listeners to read and master the discipline. Since all three lecturers were formidable and creative scholars who had made transformative contributions to Austrian economics, however, many in the audience harbored concerns about their own capacity to make original contributions. Roger’s paper put all such concerns to rest and fueled our aspirations not merely to read and teach but to advance Austrian economics.
Of course, Roger’s creativity and influence go far beyond his pioneering article. In fact, this article was only the first step in developing over the course of his career what has come to be called capital-based macroeconomics, a full-blown Austrian alternative to mainstream macroeconomics that he laid out in his great work, Time and Money: The Macroeconomics of the Capital Structure.
All Austrian economists in my and subsequent generations owe Roger a debt of gratitude for illuminating the path forward in doing original research in Austrian economics.
—Joseph T. Salerno
I was very new to Austrian economics when I came to Mises University in 2009. Ron Paul had inspired me to read works like Economics in One Lesson and a few other beginner-level books. The ideas were intriguing, so I attended Mises University to get a deeper understanding.
Near the end of the first day of the conference, this unassuming man stood in front of a PowerPoint slide with the title “Capital-Based Macroeconomics.” He introduced a few different graphs: a loanable funds market, a graph depicting the trade-off between consumption and investment, a Hayekian triangle, and some labor markets that correspond to specific stages of production.
Then he put them all together. And animated them.
He explained what was happening in plain English and sprinkled in some humor along the way: “I use the term ‘capital-based macro,’ although for this crowd it’s Austrian economics. . . . it keeps people from asking about Australia.”
Then in his uniquely Garrisonian way, explained how artificial credit expansion gives the illusion of prosperity. He showed how unsustainable booms arise, and how the lack of real savings results in an inevitable bust. All of it was contrasted with the Keynesian framework.
I was amazed. By the end of his lecture, I was determined to go to Auburn to pursue a PhD in economics and learn as much as I could about Austrian economics.
At Auburn, I had the pleasure of taking two courses with Dr. Garrison: one on macroeconomics and the other on the history of economic thought. His courses featured the same excellent instruction, subtle humor, and well-designed PowerPoints as his Mises University lecture.
I would often go to Dr. Garrison’s office hours and ask him about Austrian economics, classical liberal ideas, and the history of economic thought. The guy was a treasure trove.
When it was my turn to teach students about macroeconomics and the history of economic thought, it was heavily inspired by what I learned from Roger Garrison. I had the pleasure of seeing students’ eyes light up when Austrian business cycle theory “clicked” for them.
It was a great honor to finally stand where Dr. Garrison had at Mises University, lecturing students on business cycle theory and other topics. As a member of a younger generation of scholars, I don’t pretend to have the same wisdom and influence as Dr. Garrison, but I hope all of us who learned from him and were inspired by him will carry the torch.
Generations of scholars come and go; a few, like Roger Garrison, make their mark on the field and inspire future generations to do the same.
—Jonathan R. Newman
