Now That Explains A Lot

|Peter Boettke|

Tyler Cowen lists the books that have influenced him the most.  The list is quite illuminating for anyone who knows Tyler.  But Tyler what about Wicksteed --- 'we are all doing it, but none of know we are doing it' --- I was sure The Common-Sense of Political Economy  would have been high on your list?

Comments

[Jule Herbert]

I first met Tyler when he was, I believe, 17 or 18, and this period, I gather, was just after his Rand and Hayek introduction and just before Keynes and Mill (if the list above is in fact in chronological order).

I have no idea if during this period Tyler had a chance to read Hazlitt's The Failure of the "New Economics" before reading Keynes (as I did) or Hayek's comments and analysis in John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor prior to reading Mill's Autobiography, but the experience of having coming in touch of those books first certainly inoculated this writer from being easily swayed from those quarters.

[Daniel J. D'Amico]

So what's your list Pete?

[Sheldon Richman]

Tyler's Keynes remark has me baffled.

[Barkley Rosser]

I confess that I am a bit mystified as to what this list explains: that Tyler failed to be "inoculated" against the evil commie John Stuart Mill by reading some weak soup like Hazlitt?

[Peter Boettke]

Dan,

My list would have a lot of the same authors as Tyler, though often different works. The first time I thought seriously about anything other than sports and girls was in a Pass/Fail philosophy course at Thiel College in the Spring of 1979. We read Plato's Republic, but it was the professors pushing us by asking questions. I came much later to intellectual attention than Tyler.

Then at Grove City College, I actually read Hazlitt's Economics in One Leeson, which led to Mises's Socialism and Theory of Money and Credit, and then Friedman's Free to Choose. This led to Human Action and Man, Economy and State, and of course Sennholz's The Age of Inflation. I also read alongside of these works The City of God, Science, Faith and Society, The Study of Man, and The Ascent of Man. In my second year at Grove City College, I had a year long history of thought class and we read original works, and my favorites were Smith, The Wealth of Nations, and Say's Treatise. I did not like Ricardo when I first read him, and the truth is I have never really gone back to pay as much attention as I should.

The rest was a course of study in Austrian economics -- Menger, Bohm-Bawerk, Hayek, Lachmann, Kirzner, etc., and then in graduate school the modern Austrian school. My focus at GCC was on reading Mises and Rothbard, at GMU it became more Hayek, Lachmann, Kirzner, Shackle, Loasby, and then Rizzo, O'Driscoll, White, Garrison, and of course Lavoie. Reading White's Free Banking in Britain book was a very pivotal work in 1984 followed by Lavoie's Rivalry and Central Planning in draft and then published form. I also, of course, was reading Buchanan and Tullock, and Coase, Alchian, and Demsetz, and Tollison and Wagner. And Kenneth Boulding had this huge impact on me both in his writings and in our personal interactions. McCloskey's work on methodology, the profession, and broad sweeping economic and political history is something that has always impressed me both in its boldness and its breadth.

After graduate school, I would say the most enjoyable things I have read have been written by: Albert Hirschman, Jon Elster, Camile Paglia (I went through a period where I read everything she wrote in the early to mid 1990s and taught her work in a course at NYU), etc.

I am always on the look out for the "wow" factor in reading, etc. Loren Lomasky's Persons, Rights and Community had the impact on me, whereas Nozick didn't for the longest time, but eventually did. Shleifer had that impact on me as did Timur Kuran's work on preference falsification, whereas Acemoglu grew on me over time.

Among my peer group, I do have to say that Tyler's In Praise of Commercial Culture I found amazing in its sweep, but in the early 1990s when I was just starting out my career I really was blown away by Robert Leonard's work in the history of Viennese economics and culture, and Avner Greif's work on self-enforcing contracts. I remember a sense of awe in seeing those guys present their work for the first-time. I will not go into who invoked the opposite reaction over the years and who left me completely underwhelmed -- but suffice it to say, it has been plenty.

[Barkley Rosser]

Pete,

Ah, so you were inoculated by Hazlitt. I take it back.

[Mario Rizzo]

I have it on the HIGHEST AUTHORITY that Tyler likes Wicksteed's book.

[Daniel J. D'Amico]

Leave it to Pete to throw budget constraints to the wind.

[slavisa]

Dr. Rizzo, what's your list?

[topills.com review]

The experience of wartime communism during the Great War inspired much that came later.