Readers of yesterday’s post responded enthusiastically with lots of great suggestions for readings on the history of economic thought – see for example this list from Beatrice Cherrier.
Still, it’s clear there’s no single and accessible, reasonably short, book that is a post-1930s equivalent of Heilbroner’s [amazon_link id=”0140290060″ target=”_blank” ]The Worldly Philosophers[/amazon_link]. So here are my suggested candidates for a follow-up. This doesn’t mean I like them all! The criterion is that they clearly shaped the character of economics in a meaningful and lasting way – going up to the early 1980s. Needless to say, the suggestions also reflect the limitations of what I know.
Feel free to disagree! But the limit is 12 chapters, so if you’re adding names, you also need to subtract.
- John Nash
- Ronald Coase
- Paul Samuelson
- Ken Arrow
- Milton Friedman
- Gary Becker
- Fischer Black
- Robert Lucas
- Paul Romer
- Joseph Stiglitz
- James Heckman
- Daniel Kahneman
One of the interesting aspects of this exercise is how little known to the general public most of these people are – making the selection difficult because of course there are lots of economists almost as influential who are omitted from this list. Contrast this the role inter-war economists played as public intellectuals when it was clear who the most influential thinkers in the subject were. Maybe that’s changing again now, in the era of Piketty.
Update: Beatrice Cherrier has put together a terrific list of readings about the people suggested in this post.
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Leontief in, Black out. Input output analysis is used much more than you might think, if only because it enables economists to distinuish between (slowly changing) physical relations (aka output of carbondioxide per ton of steel) and economic relations, which are also influenced by sometimes rapidly and often strongly changing relative prices (aka *the value* of labour input per ton of steel). And it’s really used a lot! With the change in prices I do not hint at the role of prices as incentive (though that’s important too) but to prices as a measure of (economic) value. The economic value of the production of milk has declined *a lot* because of the decline of the relative price of milk, it’s nutritional value did not diminish. Input-output enables analyses of such processes.
P.S. – grumpy remark. Is it allowed to mention economists who are not native english speakers?
Non-English speakers warmly welcome if they meet the influence criterion. I thought about Jean Tirole.
Addendum: to be clear: input/output analysis of course enables us to calculate the *total* amount of carbondioxed produced per ton of steel, including transport and forward, backward and sideward linkages.
What about Solow (economic growth) or Prescott (quantitative macroeconomics)? I dont know anything about Black and his contribution.
My list:
+ Solow, Prescott, Tobin, Debreu.
– Coase, Black, Romer, Kahneman.
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Dear Diane
You might want to have a look at Todd Buchholz’s New Ideas from Dead Economists, last updated in 2007: http://www.apsva.us/cms/lib2/VA01000586/Centricity/Domain/3205/newideas_deadeconomists.pdf
All the best
Bob
P.S. A few years ago I was down to write a follow up to Schumpeter’s Ten Great Economists. These were my proposed names: Arrow, Friedman, Galbraith, Hayek, Hicks, Lucas, Robinson, Samuelson, Schumpeter, and Sraffa. My only doubt now would be whether Robinson and Sraffa should be in there. They could easily be replaced by Becker and Kalecki, the latter of which hardly ever gets a look in but is regarded by some as the greatest all-round economist of the 20th century.
Good selection, and good point about Kalecki. My criterion was a bit different – who shaped economics through the decades? Galbraith and Sraffa wouldn’t qualify – even if you thin they should have! Probably not Robinson either, tho it would be good to have a female on the list.
Possibly true about Kalecki – but then why was Veblen in Heilbroner’s original? Heilbroner has a lot about life stories. I think that was partly what made the book so interesting as it helped to bring the economics to life. Galbraith’s life was probably more varied than many of the others on the updated list. Many would argue that his (subtle) influence on policy was significant, even if his taste was not for mathematical economics.
As ever
Bob