March 9, 2024
This fun network analysis is courtesy of my very gifted former student, Janna Lu.
The data are from Wikipedia—so, grain of salt.
For the entire diagram, click here.
And here’s a snippet:
A few years ago, I wrote about the 150th anniversary of the Austrian School, an event dated to Carl Menger’s Principles of Economics (economists aren’t renowned for their creative titles—also, see here or here or…). Nicholas Cachanosky likewise summarized the highlights of the first century and a half of Austrian economics. Probably what I liked most about his paper was this labor-of-love visual at the end.
Here’s a simpler distillation of Austrian influences:
Like any other intellectual movement, Austrian economics was not and is not a disembodied series of ideas. From the beginning—that is, the Marginal Revolution—the Austrians were an integral part of the economic conversation. For anyone looking to learn, rather than snipe, this is a good place to start. Agree or disagree with Peter Boettke’s “mainline hypothesis,” you’ll gain a deeper appreciation of how the Austrians fit in the history of economic thought by reading his work.
How much ignorant social media sniping about the Austrian tradition in economics could be avoided if people grasped its history, scope, and place in the much larger economic conversation? A boy can dream.