For almost all analysis of entrepreneurship, Israel Kirzner's insights and views on entrepreneurship are superior to those of Joseph Schumpeter's.
Schumpeter's "creative destruction" view is taught in most intro econ courses and there is seldom a word about Kirzner's view of an entrepreneur as an arbitrageur. It really should be the other way around. Kirzner's view has much more application in the real world.
A brief real world explanation of how Kirzner's entrepreneur, as arbitrageur, acts was recently posted at, of all places, an internet sight dedicated to Schumpeter, here.
There are currently only two economists that deserve the Nobel Prize in economics, Kirzner is one of them. The other is Thomas Sowell for his work on race and ethnicity.
I agree, Kirzner and Sowell are the most under-appreciated living economists but surely they deserve something better than the Nobel Prize. If Gates and Buffet insist on giving away their money they should create a well publicized event and give each of these gentleman $1 billion for identifying the principles of action that were essential for Gates and Buffet to earn their fortunes.
ReplyDeleteThis would also be an interesting experiment to see how two great economists would "put their money where their mouth is."