Saturday, March 31, 2007

How to Succeed in Economics?

Peter Leeson, Dan Klein, Peter Boettke and Frederic Sautet, and Peter Boettke have been discussing how to advance Austrian economics.

I find of particular interest the claim that, "Most economists will have no idea what you're talking about if you tell them you're working on 'capital theory'".

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have any Austrians replied to your paper on capital theory?

Robert Vienneau said...

No, they haven't. I wonder if any recent defenders of Austrian Business Cycle theory accept the Austrian theory of secondary recessions.

Anonymous said...

I'm not that surprised. Austrians seem a tad unwilling to consider criticism. I've lost count of the number of times I've read accounts of the Austrian theory of the business cycle which fail to note that Kaldor destroyed Hayek's theory twice in the space of a decade. Then Hayek basically gave up. Nor, of course, does Sraffa get a mention, in spite of his wonderful critique of Hayek.

I recently read Murray Rothbard's essay on Keynes (available via the Wikipedia entry on Keynes). What a laugh. He attacks Keynes as being a bad economist who ignored or distorted the far better Austrian business cycle. He also laments that many Austrians switched sides in the 1930s (I do not think he mentions Kaldor). Which, of course, seems a tad contradictory.

Still, I oppose logic is not really that important when you are attacking someone for being a gay, fascistic, elitist, ignorant, bad economist! While, of course, being puzzled that such a terrible person and economist happened to influence so many in the profession (Rothbard, needless to say, blames the youth -- younger economists were lead astray).

Iain

Robert Vienneau said...

I don't think highly of that Rothbard article either.

The journal I submitted my article has had it six months. That's longer than they claim it takes for comments, but editors always have a problem in meeting schedules.

One doesn't have to come close to agreeing with Austrianism to look for lessons in their tactical discussions. So I thought whatever readers this blog may have might find the links in the post of interest.

ivanfoofoo said...

Could you please point me out on those criticism of Hayek by Kaldor?