Krugman writes:
David Warsh finally says what someone needed to say: Friedrich Hayek is not an important figure in the history of macroeconomics.Warsh, under the guise of writing economic opinion, regurgitates whatever pamphlet or book comes across his desk. Warsh doesn't hold opinions for more than the next column, yet this is the commentator that Krugman throws at his readers, as if Warsh has a sound opinion on Hayek, or could even be counted on to form one.
These days, you constantly see articles that make it seem as if there was a great debate in the 1930s between Keynes and Hayek, and that this debate has continued through the generations. As Warsh says, nothing like this happened.
Here is Warsh writing, yesterday:
Everyone in Boston of a certain age knows the story of Rosie Ruiz, the marathoner who crossed the Boston finish line in 1980 at 2:31.56, flabby thighs and all, having barely broken a sweat. Despite mounting skepticism, she basked in the glory of having run the third-fastest female marathon in history – for a few days, that is, until a couple of students remembered seeing her jump out of the crowd half a mile from the finish.This is what Warsh wrote in 2007, after reading Bruce Caldwell:.
Something of the sort has been going on recently with the shade of Friedrich von Hayek. The Austrian economist, who died in 1992 just short of what would have been his ninety-third birthday, never made false claims for himself – far from it: he knew all too well the loneliness of the long distance runner. And scrupulous work as editor by the late W.W. Bartley, interpreter Bruce Caldwell, and biographer Alan Ebenstein, have made it possible to see the man clear.
But the claims conservatives are making about the role he played as an economist are beginning to smack of Ruizismus. That is, they have jumped a caricature out of the bushes late in the day and claim that their guy ran a great race.... the fact remains that Hayek just didn’t contribute very much to the development of technical economics.
