Search

"Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative" is a biography written by Jennifer Burns that provides a comprehensive and well-documented account of the life and work of economist Milton Friedman. The book explores Friedman's academic career, his influential theories, and his political philosophy of freedom. It also delves into his relationships with important women in his life and his controversial views on race and his involvement with General Pinochet in Chile. Overall, the biography offers valuable insights into Friedman's contributions to economics and the complexities of his beliefs and actions. [Extracted from the article]

Mittermaier, Karl, Foreword by Mittermaier, Isabella (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2020), pp. 278, freely available at https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-hand-behind-the-invisible-hand. This is, one would have recognized it, exactly what Buchanan put forward in his famous "Positive Economics, Welfare Economics, and Political Economy" (1959), in which he insisted that economists should be "non-normative", remain positive, and limit themselves to "discovering 'what is the structure of individual values'" (1959, p. 137), and that the only means economists have to avoid being normative is to restrict themselves to suggesting institutional changes. This is where the economist becomes normative, as would have said Buchanan, or exogenously imposes his values, as Mittermaier writes (p. 44), even if he also argues that the general equilibrium theorists hold "denormatized" views on free markets - another major difference with the pragmatic view on the invisible hand and the free market. [Extracted from the article]

Hodgson is an important scholar, not only an economist actually, but an economist who has understood that economics is more than economics, one who "has made path-breaking contributions to institutional economics, evolutionary economics, economic methodology, the history of economic thought and social theory more broadly" (p. 2). I have not yet mentioned Chapter 20, the last and fifth part of the book - "Geoff Hodgson on Geoff Hodgson" - which is a conversation between Hodgson, Gagliardi and Gindis. But, at the same time, Hodgson contributed to rehabilitating the works of someone like Veblen - who was critical of neo-classical economics and who is not really important for mainstream economics. [Extracted from the article]

It allows Levy and Peart to stress that VPE rests on philosophical and ethical foundations-natural equality-, on a defense of democracy-as a government by discussion-and, as a consequence, on a specific definition of economics. Circumscribing the role of economists to the analysis and choice of rules is important because it allows them to avoid the trap of normativity when they make policy recommendations which was important for the economists who founded VPE. As Levy and Peart explain, Virginia political economists defined their discipline as having to focus on the process towards equilibrium and on rules and institutions. [Extracted from the article]

This essay reviews Nancy MacLean's Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America, which triggered a huge controversy that virally spread on the Internet and in various journals. We will evaluate MacLean's almost biographical account of James Buchanan, which portrays the 1986 Nobel Prize laureate as the mastermind behind today's attacks, by the foot soldiers of the radical right, on American democracy. This essay develops three main points. One, MacLean's general narrative puts too much emphasis on Buchanan and largely neglects the many other important characters who contributed to the intellectual criticism of government intervention. Two, MacLean's account is marred by many misunderstandings about public choice theory, for instance about the role that simple majority rule plays in constitutional economics. Third, in the midst of abundant archival material, her historical narrative is, at best, sketchy, and is replete with significantly flawed arguments, misplaced citations, and dubious conjectures. Overall, MacLean tends to overinterpret certain aspects in Buchanan's life and thought, while she overlooks others that are equally important in understanding his work and influence. In particular, we stress that Buchanan was, first and foremost, a scholar, not a political activist, who gave significant attention to ethical considerations in his analysis of markets. (JEL A11, B21, B31, D72, K00, N42) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]