Family Tree of Economics | Hacker News Reader

Family Tree of Economics

pc.blogspot.com

55 pointsicc9734 comments

Though I have strong Austrian sympathies myself, this tree drastically overemphasizes their importance (and misclassifies Tyler Cowen, who hasn't been an Austrian since his first year in grad school if I remember correctly). There are a dozen economists who should have been listed on the other side before Pascal Salin, and many dozens in the modern era before Reisman and Salerno. As much as I love Boettke, he's influential primarily as a teacher, which sets him apart from the rest of this group.

Well, there's no arrow on the diagram connecting "Austrian Economics" with "Modern Mainstream Economics", so the diagram doesn't really make them look all that important.

It makes them look important in the sense that Boettke is included and literally hundreds of people with more influence on the history of economic thought are omitted.

As an illustration of where the diagram creator's favoured economists sit in relation to mainstream thought that's fair enough, but as a guide to the overall field of economic thought it's akin to a family tree of "entrepreneur philosophies" which includes Carnegie, Ford, Welch, Buffett, Gates, Jobs, Musk and your friends' early stage startups.

Just the amount of space devoted to them exaggerates their importance to the field (though Menger, Kirzner, and Hayek -- possibly Mises as well -- would still make my cut. But a list that has Salin and not Akerlof or Arrow (just to start with the A's)? He mentions Coase as being on there, but I don't see him, and Coase is literally the most-cited economist of all time.

This family tree is just objectively bad. Huge omissions and most of the modern characters included are known more for their pop-econ than real developments in theory.

I mean, say what you will about the moral and structural claims of Marxism but there was actually a tradition of economic thought there that was at least as coherent as whatever nonsense the Rothbard/Mises fetishists like to indulge in. There aren't even any of the more mainstream, Marxist adjacent theorists like the Georgists.

Also, everything past Keynes just looks like pop-economists or broad categories and just misses most of the early to mid 20th century. There is no Galbraith, the architect of the New Deal? There aren't any notable Behavioral Economists mentioned, which is one of the most interesting expansions of the field in a generation and will probably have far reaching influence in how the discipline develops in the future. No Piketty, who wrote one of the most influential works of the past decade? NOTHING at all about development economists like Stiglitz, Easterly, or Sachs even though they've had a huge role in shaping how we understand emerging markets and will be even more important as we start trying to figure out how to deal with climate change?

Absolutely. In philosophy, and plenty of other fields with central concerns of theory, it’s common that an influence is also someone who one disagrees with, and is responding to. Most the middle area of this chart should be under Marx, and it is outright laughable that Keynes is not.

Disappointed that Henry George is absent. ;)

No distributists either.

Once took a History of Economic Theory course that completely ignored the Austrians. Nice to see them included

Because they're a tiny footnote and are nonexistent nowadays in academia and economics circles.

I've seen more about Austrians in the last 2 days on HN than in 4 years of taking Econ in University.

Having graduated with an Econ degree just 5 years ago, I can tell you that this is 100% false.

1. What are current open questions Austrian economists study?

2. Advances in Austrian economics in last 10-20 years?

This is serious question.

I have no idea. I'm not an Austrian, but I can tell you that stating they are "nonexistent" in modern academia is just wrong.

Go look up Peter Boettke at George Mason -- he is a current, publishing Austrian Economist (he gave a talk at my uni).

Lol. Non-existent as in they don't produce any important studies, hardly get cited, and don't influence mainstream economics. Apart from academia, they're non existent in industry or in government. The fact a few exist in universities doesn't make them relevant.

>Apart from academia, they're non existent in industry or in government.

As a point of order. They're non-existent in the parts of government that actually do economist work, but the political appointee positions are lousy with them.

And boy do they punch above their weight in the financial press, chambers of commerce, think-tank circuit, etc.

In other words, Austrians do very well in any place that's sustained through the largesse of plutocrats and political donors. I wonder why. . .

I also wish their school of thought had an adjectival form that didn't make it sound like I'm slandering an entire nationality. Some of my best friends are Austrians! But they're mostly leftists. . .

> financial press, chambers of commerce, think-tank circuit, etc.

Where? It seems most of the economists in these circles ascribe to the Friedman/Chicago school of thought.

> But they're mostly leftists. . .

Even though Austrian economics is associated with the right wing, right wing economists by and large have nothing to do with the Austrian school.

Friedman, Greenspan, Mankiw, Laffer et al are certainly not Austrians.

Bitcoin/virtual currencies are a study in Austrian economics (free market for currencies instead of state/gov/central bank control)

Free market != Austrian economics. Also, the means by which virtual currencies are produced is controlled. And currencies/monetary policy is well within the realm of mainstream economics.

Austrians eschew almost all quantitative methods, all study of alt-coins is done within the framework of mainstream economics.

check out this paper by hayek arguing for denationalization of currency. free market doesn’t mean no control over creation of currency, just that they are created and traded by private enterprise instead of gov/central banks

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denationalization_of_Mon...

Most cryptocurrency proponents studiously avoid Hayek and other Austrians' conclusions that private currency would need backing with commodities to be credible, and that loans were the most appropriate model for private currency providers to make a profit though.

yea because Hayek wanted to create an actual viable market of competitive currencies while the vast majority of cryptocurrencies today are pump n dump schemes with little to no economic thought put into them and no long term business model. why would u want to peg and limit the value of your currency when there’s a chance you can get T-Pain to blow it up sky high on hype, you sell off and make your profit that way instead of the long term profitable way of loaning money and arbitraging interest rates the way banks do now. Hayek’s thesis is still very relevant and becoming moreso in my opinion as central banks further distort the markets through unprecedented (pre 2008) actions such as direct liquidity injections through trillions in bond purchases

As the other commenter noted, I think there are several folks at Mason who are Austrian leaning. Don Boudreaux was someone whose writing I followed back in the late 20-aughts, I'm sure he's still doing work.

George Mason very much the case of the exception underlining the rule though: it's the go to place for Austrian economics, has massive Koch Foundation endowments to encourage it to emphasis Austrian economics in its teaching, and yet it's still populated by people who are somewhat sympathetic to Austrian ideas that write "why I am not an Austrian Economist" essays and has a pretty non-Austrian sounding syllabus.

I think the status of Austrian economics in academia is best represented by the Mises Foundation's short list of best places to study Austrian economics, which concedes "some only have a sympathetic faculty member" and warns that some places have a lot of mathematics...

Their list is extremely outdated, and represents a fairly narrow view of Austrians (most modern Austrians not affiliated with LvMI, which is the majority of them, do quite a bit of quantitative work where it's warranted).

GMU is still the center (it's an Austrian fusion, but there's still a LOT of Austrian stuff -- Bryan Caplan is the exception rather than the rule), but Texas Tech, Troy, SJSU, FSU, and a number of others have heavy representation. I can think of at least 25 universities off the top of my head with at least one open Austrian on faculty. And yes, syllabi aren't just Austrian stuff -- even Austrians want you to learn Economics, not just what Mises said about Economics.

I don't know where you went, but where I took my degree, the only mention of Austrian economics was a brief mention of Hayek and Mises in a history of economics thought course.

Made an account just to say that San Jose State University's Economics department mainly teaches Austrian economics.

http://info.sjsu.edu/web-dbgen/catalog/courses/ECON155.html

Really?

http://info.sjsu.edu/web-dbgen/catalog/departments/ECON-cour...

Yes, all those subjects are taught with a focus on Austrian economic theory.

I'm disappointed (though not surprised) to see Marx so marginalised. In particular, Schumpeter was in massive debt to Marx, as is quite clear from reading Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. The whole idea of creative destruction, for example, which is popular up to the day, is basically lifted straight from Marx. Of course, the evolutionary economists who consider themselves in Schumpeters legacy, tend to ignore this link too.

The creator seems/seemed to be taking suggestions to improve it. I'd encourage people who have improvements to suggest to suggest them, and/or create their own version using their own tools e.g. graphviz.

Where's chartalists / neochartalists / MMT?

The chart is also extremely lacking on the Marxian front, and also on the Post-Keynesian and Sraffian fronts. It's laughable that the only descendant of Marx's line of thought is a non-Marxist, Joan Robinson. Paul Samuelson is included but there's nothing of the debates with him from the Sraffian and Marxist schools. There's no mention of the Japanese Marxists, either.

I don't know if the fact that Marx's line connects to Malthus rather than the whole box for the classical school means anything, but if it should be connected to anyone in that box, it should be connected to Ricardo, not Malthus.

It's an admirable attempt, but the chart is lacking in at least one area I can identify, so it could easily be lacking or outright wrong in others.

In terms of where they'd sit, you can pretty much draw a line from Keynes via (to an extent) Joan Robinson and other post Keynesians to MMT

In terms of why aren't they on there it's because they're really not that influential, (as pointed out elsewhere, the family tree does massively overstate the influence of Austrian Economics and includes some very minor economists associated with that school but that's clearly a reflection of the creator's personal preferences. Cairnes and Nassau Senior are odd choices too). Not many people who weren't hardcore MMTers would think Randy Wray or Bill Mitchell should be on there ahead of the likes of Arrow, Solow, Tobin, Mundell Prescott etc and even within post-Keynesianism there are bigger names in macro.

I would love the arc post-Marx to be more complete.

For instance, it could have Paul Sweezy and Paul A Baran on it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com