Readers of yesterday’s post responded enthusiastically with lots of great suggestions for readings on the history of economic thought – see for example this list from Beatrice Cherrier.
Still, it’s clear there’s no single and accessible, reasonably short, book that is a post-1930s equivalent of Heilbroner’s [amazon_link id=”0140290060″ target=”_blank” ]The Worldly Philosophers[/amazon_link]. So here are my suggested candidates for a follow-up. This doesn’t mean I like them all! The criterion is that they clearly shaped the character of economics in a meaningful and lasting way – going up to the early 1980s. Needless to say, the suggestions also reflect the limitations of what I know.
Feel free to disagree! But the limit is 12 chapters, so if you’re adding names, you also need to subtract.
- John Nash
- Ronald Coase
- Paul Samuelson
- Ken Arrow
- Milton Friedman
- Gary Becker
- Fischer Black
- Robert Lucas
- Paul Romer
- Joseph Stiglitz
- James Heckman
- Daniel Kahneman
One of the interesting aspects of this exercise is how little known to the general public most of these people are – making the selection difficult because of course there are lots of economists almost as influential who are omitted from this list. Contrast this the role inter-war economists played as public intellectuals when it was clear who the most influential thinkers in the subject were. Maybe that’s changing again now, in the era of Piketty.
Update: Beatrice Cherrier has put together a terrific list of readings about the people suggested in this post.