A good summation of Hayek by DeLong. That's actually just a small part of the post, but I liked it a lot. I hate this "clash of the titans"/"fight of the century" mentality that some people have. It's absurdly juvenile. If you can't recognize quality economics in both Keynes and Hayek - if you have to dismiss either of them as being some kind of threat to Western civilization - you're really out of your depths and should probably just keep your thoughts to yourself.
That's all.
Monday, June 20, 2011
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Hayek states explicitly where to draw the line; he draws the line at competition. When states start planning against competition that's where the problem starts. Nothing really fuzzy about that and it is a relatively easy rule to apply in the real world. So yeah, Keynes was wrong about that.
ReplyDeleteBTW, it is kind of odd to claim that his thoughts on the business cycle are flawed, since Hayek in part won the Nobel Prize based on such (the press released regarding the award states as such).
ReplyDeleteQuick question Daniel (and DeLong) - have you read "Prices and Production?"
Anyway, it is really very hard to understate Hayek's influence across a wide rage of fields; that's partly what makes him so interesting - he would dip in, make a seminal contribution, then go onto something else, leaving for others to sort out the details, the errors, the refinements, etc. Hayek was the greatest economist/social scientist of the 20th century.
BTW, that wasn't even close to a summation of Hayek, much less a good one. Honestly, it doesn't even talk about anything wrote past _The Road To Serfdom_.
ReplyDeleteDaniel actually did read Prices and Production and I know Daniel appreciates Hayek's contributions to the business cycle (seeing as how he says so a thousand times). If DeLong wrote that about Mises, then you would have an argument Gary. But Daniel has always understood the importance of Hayek. While I don't exactly understand how Daniel can incorporate Hayek and Keynes the way he does, I take it for granted that Daniel has nothing but respect for Hayek.
ReplyDeleteMattheus,
ReplyDeleteMost of my comments were directed at the DeLong post actually. But it really wasn't a good summation, so Daniel is wrong about that.
I have read it - I can't speak for DeLong.
ReplyDeleteAs for Hayek dipping in... I see him more as a guy that powerfully restated things that had long been understood. This is how I've come to understand, for example, all his work on knowledge and the price mechanism. It's not that he was providing a new argument so much as he was really getting at the heart of what people had been saying about the efficiency of the price mechanism.
I'm not sure how seminal all this is. I genuinely don't think the history of economic thought in the 20th century would have been all that different without Hayek. Of course this is not to say that he didn't make a very rich contribution.
He's absolutely not the greatest economist/social scientist of the 20th century. I think that's far too much for even Hayek fans to claim.
He is the greatest economist/social scientist of the 20th century. And many Hayek "fans" who are also economists have stated so. Not that this is any absolute measure, but we Hayek "fans" state it quite a bit.
ReplyDelete"I genuinely don't think the history of economic thought in the 20th century would have been all that different without Hayek."
That's really not the least bit surprising.