This topic is in response to a question Neil raised:



I had criticized Friedman and the monetarist philosophy.

So which economists do you listen to?

I mentioned that Friedman was controversial. So are all economists, because like sociology and history, they are dealing with a system so vast, with so many variables, that complete and scientific understanding of them is impossible. As to economists I personally consider interesting:

Alex McLeod, at York University in Toronto

Walden Bello, Phillipino economist

Frederick Argy

Karl Marx (you knew his ugly head would be raised, didn't you!) I am not a Marxist, but his theories can not be ignored in the modern world.

Though he is not an economist, I admire David Korten's analyses of economics in relation to wealth and disparity.

Here is a link to what I believe is a cogent criticism of neo-classical economics:
Parecon's analysis

I think it is important to think of economics as the hardest of the soft sciences, not the softest of the hard sciences.

Which economists are most influential in establishing your own beliefs about economics?

Great thread Quarkhead. I've gotta run but I will give my thoughts later.

Von Mises,Hayek and Friedman are my heroes. Hayek's "Road to Serfdom" was arguably the greatest economic tome of the 20th Century. Can not forget Adam Smith. Individuals who have influenced my thinking, though I disagree with much of their philosophy, are Rothbard and Galbraith. Spenser and J.S. Mill were social scientists before social scientists were divided into various disciplines, they were both brilliant, though Spenser was tainted by being subject to the racial bigotries of his era.

I can not remember the authors of all the economics books I have read but most of them were textbooks. I do like the simplicity of how Milton Friedman describes human interaction. Other economists seem to have a more complicated model for describing economic systems which does not ring as true to me a when I read Friedman.

The economists that have influenced my thinking are for the most part advocates of classic economics. Milton Friedman, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Sowell, John Babtist Say, Friedrich Von Hayek. I have read some Keynes, and have tinkered with the underconsumption idea here and there, but I have yet to be convinced. I do not advocate the ideas of economists, or philosophers (such as Marx) who's ideas require massive coercion. Aside from the fact that those ideas fly in the face of the whole concept of freedom, they have also been disastrous when applied.

Forgot to mention Williams.

I'm no economist, but I've read a lot of economics.

Of the early economists Adam Smith and Frederic Bastiat are the only ones I can say I've been influenced by. J.S. Mill too but more as a political philosopher than as economist.

Mostly I agree with the Austrians, especially Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek. But like, Mill, Hayek is of interest to me mainly as a political philosopher.

Same for Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams -- I love them but I don't read their economics, just their more general commentary. Rothbard too for that matter; his early American history is fascinating, as are his theories about anarchism. Milton Friedman is one of my heroes, not so much for monetarism as for his tireless promotion of the libertarian philosophy.

Marx is important of course but I don't buy too many of his ideas. Same for Keynes and Galbraith, though I'm eclectic enough to take insights from any of them.

Arthur Laffer, Jude Wanniski and the rest of the Supply Siders are important and I've learned a lot from them. James Buchanan, Gordon Tulluck and the Public Choice school are more important though. Also Ronald Coase, Armen Alchian and Harold Demsetz. (I was fortunate enough to have had a chance to meet and discuss issues with Demsetz and John Chamberlain at a FEE seminar.)

On development economics, P.T. Bauer and Hernando De Soto (the Peruvian economist, not the Spanish explorer).

And though he's certainly no economist, P.J. O'Rourke's Eat the Rich is mostly about economics and is educational but most importantly, funny.

"[The government] covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd." -- Wilhelm Roepke (another economist who did a lot of social theorizing)