Holy Trinity

The three most important people in c20th economics are:

1. Frank Knight
2. Ludwig Von Mises
3. Lionel Robbins

From these teacher-professors stemmed (almost directly) every great contribution.

Comments

[Andrew]

What about Coase? Are you counting him as part of Frank Knight's lineage?

[AJE]

Hi Andrew, thanks for stopping by

Certainly Coase would be in a top 5, but

a) I do think Coase has a direct link to Knight (and indeed Robbins,) but I chose those two departmental figure ahead of him since they lie further upstream. Perhaps I was thinking more of facilitators than producers.

Regardless,

b) This post is nothing more than a vulgar attempt to prompt Steve into a response! I miss my co-Editor and know that the surest way to provoke him is by taking a view on Coase he disagrees with...

(e.g. here

[dearieme]

Keynes was surely terribly important; just look at the damage he wrought. You shouldn't exclude him just because he was wrong-headed and intellectually infertile.

[AJE]

True, but I'm a subjectivist!

[Hugh V. McLachlan]

Those three books are definitely very important.

May I add a fourth book to the list? It is called: Social Justice, Human Rights and Public Policy (Humming Earth, 2005). For details see www.hummingearth.com

Topics covered include: health; health care; taxation; discrimination; education: poverty; income and wealth.

Two central themes are that the notion of 'social justice' is not a sound basis for public policy and that many so-called 'human rights' are not rights of any significant sort.

The book was written by me:-

Dr. Hugh V. McLachlan

Reader

School of Law and Social Sciences

Glasgow Caledonian University

Scotland

[AJE]

cheeky bugger

[Quinn]

I have looked everywhere, but I can't find the result of the Hugh versus McLachlan game. Can anybody assist?

[Hugh McLalchlan]

You are right. I am very sorry. It was a childish impulse.