Just providing an update here. It may not appear so on the surface, but it has been a rather productive May and early June for me. I have just finished updating and revising just about every main page on this website and made a few additions. Below, I have all of my plans for the summer and the foreseeable future laid out [and there's quite a bit]:
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[This paper was originally written for ECON 3469 - History of Economic Thought, and is my most challenging thesis yet. As with anything in HET, this is conjectural.]
Alfred Marshall, an Austrian Sympathizer in the Cambridge Court?
By Ryan Safner
I. INTRODUCTION
Alfred Marshall, the great founder of neoclassical economics, shared more in common with the Austrian School than is traditionally considered. Austrian economists tend to resent Alfred Marshall as the theorist who subsumed their subjectivist theories into an objective and static model of equilibrium analysis. However, they fail to recognize the connection between Marshall and elements of the Austrian methodological tradition. To be sure, Marshall is clearly no Austrian, but many of his comments on the form and scope of economics mark him as a potential fellow-traveler. The broad range of economic action described by Marshall, and his insistence on practical applications to the real world unites him with Austrian theorists. His descriptive emphasis on the biological-evolutionary nature of the market over physical-static modeling suggests of Austrian methodology. His deep comprehension and subsequent temperance towards mathematical economics also provides hints of Austrianism. Most mainstream economists believe that Marshall had historically captured all the Austrians’ relevant contributions into his work, thus rendering the successive generations of Austrians as unnecessary anachronisms. Such followers, however, fail to appreciate the distinction that Marshall may have seen, between his dynamic economics and the successive body of economics attributed “Marshallian.”
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A.R.J. Turgot as Austrian Grandfather
by Ryan Safner
[This essay was originally written for ECON 3462 - History of Economic Thought]
Anne-Robert Jacques Turgot’s brief but brilliant writings on political economy portray him as a major intellectual precursor to the modern Austrian school of economics. Many of his primitive yet revolutionary insights into the nature of a free market bear striking resemblance to major Austrian tenets. None is so crucial and so well-developed, however, as his vision of a dynamic and emergent market order. Turgot’s shining brilliance and foresight into this area illuminates the voids of the sycophantic mercantilists and the comparative statics of the classical school. This grandiose vision would be lost for a century until it was recovered, quite independently, by the original Austrian, Carl Menger. If Menger is the father of the Austrian school, Turgot would certainly qualify as the estranged grandfather. Turgot’s prolific vision of market-based progress can be seen through a proto-Austrian lens based upon two key concepts he elucidated – the great role of the capitalist-entrepreneur and that of time. Turgot observed that it is the entrepreneur, or “undertaker,” who forecasts future conditions and undertakes a profitable venture in the context of ubiquitous risk and uncertainty. In particular, it is the capitalist-entrepreneur who forwards the money from his saved capital at a future profit to make such an undertaking possible. Since entrepreneurial action necessitates present action based on future speculation, Turgot is one of the first to highlight the immensely important and often neglected role of time in production and investment. Their combination makes for an economy where entrepreneurs act as the great equibrilators to the constant flux of market dynamics. Their actions, as well as their accumulation of capital, allow for the optimistic possibility of an ever-progressing society.
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I don’t care what you call my beliefs – debate me on the ideas behind the label.
