Some fun reading on various Great Economic Thinkers

The current New Yorker magazine has an article by John Cassidy on Keynes. I thought it was just in time, considering that in class we were recently dealing with different approaches to economic policy. Unfortunately, though, only the abstract of the article is freely available, and the JMU library does not seem to provide access to the newest issue of the magazine (it usually takes a few weeks until it arrives in the databases we subscribe to). You can find a copy at the Massanutten Regional Library in Downtown Harrisonburg (I highly recommend a visit). If you don’t want to toddle downtown for a Keynes profile, there is a 2009 piece in the New Republic that’s available online.

If this has gotten you interested in articles on Great Economic Thinkers (I know it would!), here are some suggestions for the guys from the other (ideological) side: A 2009 National Review profile of Friedrich Hayek – one of the thinkers who has heavily influenced the supply-siders – is aptly titled The Anti-Keynes. For a shorter reading, check out Francis Fukuyama’s review of a new edition of Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty in the New York Times. And for a view from the left, check out Jesse Larner’s Who’s Afraid of Friedrich Hayek? in Dissent.

To read up on one of the main persons behind Monetarism, here is a profile of Milton Friedman in Reason and an article by Paul Krugman on Friedman in the New York Review of Books. Both are from early 2007 – basically extended obituaries of Friedman, who had died in November 2006.

About these ads