Download Frederic Bastiat Bastiat was a19th Century French Classical Liberal

Grand Economic Council
Nicholas Fuentes, Chair
Frederic Bastiat
Bastiat was a19th Century French Classical Liberal economist who favored free markets while
championing individual liberty. He was weary of government intervention and wrote a
pioneering essay that developed the idea of opportunity cost that would come to form the basis of
modern economic thought.
Gary Becker
Becker favored free market over government interventionism and sought to reduce income
distribution gap with quality schooling. He advised Bob Dole's economic policy and was
opposed to government intervention in Great Recession, both monetary and fiscal measures. His
main role was as a Chicago School economist.
Ben Bernanke
Ben Bernanke favors monetary intervention in economy to relieve periods of decreased
aggregate demand. He created the Bernanke Doctrine of preventing deflation through Fed
manipulation of money. He aims for price stability and full employment and is in favor of
reducing deficit, not concerned with fiscal policy. His main role is as a Fed Chairman.
John Bates Clark
Clark was an Early American Neoclassical economist who formulated the original version of
marginal utility theory and became a key figure in the marginalist revolution in the late 19th
century. He had influential works on competition theorized that "economic darwinism" that
would bring eternal progress so long as competition is not suppressed.
Ronald Coase
Former socialist that came to be a prominent free market economist, he created the Coase
theorem and other a priori arguments weakened credibility of arguments for government
intervention and public goods. He made contributions to topic of market externalities and served
as a Chicago School economist.
Irving Fisher
Fisher is an influential American neoclassical economist who pioneered the field of econometrics
and the monetarist school of thought. Embraced by post-Keynesian economists for work on debt
deflation, he was following the Great Depression to become one of the first economists to
attribute its causes to deflation with the Quantity Theory of Money or MV=PT.
Milton Friedman
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Grand Economic Council
Nicholas Fuentes, Chair
Friedman is a Chicago School economist and one of the most influential American economists in
the post-World War II era. Best known for his essay on the monetary history of the United States
and for his work on the Phillip's Curve which won him a Nobel Prize, he worked as an advisor to
President Reagan and became a free market evangelist with his Free to Choose network series.
Henry George
George is an American economist best known for his philosophy which inspired Georgism. An
early proponent of secret ballots and in support of government issued paper currency, he was
opposed to protectionism and tariffs. He argued for common ownership of land with single tax
on land value which would allow society to profit from shared inheritance.
Friedrich Hayek
Hayek was a Second wave Austrian School economist. Originally from Austria, Hayek went to
the London School of Economics to continue his defense of classical liberalism. He is best
known for his book, The Road to Serfdom, which served as a cautionary tales to Western
democracies during the rise of totalitarianism and having co-founded the Mont Pelerin Society, a
forum for libertarian economists.
John Maynard Keynes
Keynes was an influential British economist who forever changed the methodological practices
and ideological beliefs of the field of economics with his General Theory of Employment,
Interest, and Money. Keynes' work formed the basis of the Keynesian school of thought founded
on the belief that aggregate demand determined the level of economic activity.
Oskar Lange
Lange was a Polish economist who served as a go-between for President Roosevelt and Joseph
Stalin for discussions on post-war Poland. Though a proponent of market socialism, Lange was
strongly opposed to Marxian economics, instead subscribing neoclassical price theory. His work
provided an early model for market socialism and argued in favor of central planning.
Abba Lerner
Lerner was a Russian born British economist, Post-Keynesian era. He studied under Hayek as
well as Keynes and developed a model for market socialism as well as the concept of NAIRU.
Upon emigration to the US, he became intellectual opponents with Milton Friedman and Barry
Goldwater as a member of the Cowles Commission.
Thomas Malthus
Malthus9 served as a British Classical economist whose most famous work, An Essay on the
Principle of Population, postulated that population growth will ultimately be checked by a
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limiting factor, a Malthusian catastrophe. He supported the Corn Laws and opposed the Poor
Laws. The Malthus-Ricardo debate on political economy characterized the intellectual discourse
of the early 19th century.
Alfred Marshall
Marshall was a British neoclassical economist that is considered a founder of economics. His
Principle of Economics, established Marshall as the dominant British economist from its
publishing in 1890 until his death in 1924. As a leading member of the scientific school, he
believed economics to be lacking mathematical rigor yet saw this to be a threat to the
accessibility of economics to the layman.
Karl Marx
German economist and political theorist, Karl Marx established the Marxian tradition of
economics. While famous for his Communist Manifesto, Marx's work on Capital serves as his
main contribution to the field of economics. His Dialectical method in the Hegelian tradition has
been controversial. He is often cited as a key architect of social science.
Carl Menger
He was the founder of the Austrian School of economics. As a journalist, he began to notice the
failure of the Classical cost of production theory of value in explaining prices and began to study
political economy. In 1871, his Principles of Economics was published, introducing the concept
of marginalism, launching both the marginalist revolution in economics as well as the Austrian
School of economics.
Ludwig von Mises
Mises was a second wave Austrian School economist. His most influential work was done on
economic methodology, more specifically the application of praxeology to the field of
economics, with his magnum opus, Human Action. Though his heterodox economics were
largely ignored by the rising positivist movement, his libertarian philosophy inspired former
pupils, Friedrich Hayek, Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard.
Gunnar Mydral
Mydral was a Stockholm School economist who helped to found the London Econometric
society. His book Monetary Economics first articulated the balance wheel theory use of fiscal
measures to stabilize the economy four years before Keynes' General Theory revolutionized the
field with a similar thesis. Myrdal and friend Ohlin became the first proponents of the Stockholm
school.
Vilfredo Pareto
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Grand Economic Council
Nicholas Fuentes, Chair
Pareto was an Italian Lausanne school economist who was a key figure in economics and
credited with advancing economics as a scientific field, away from the philosophical tendencies
of classical economics. He is best known for Pareto efficiency, Pareto distribution, and the
Pareto principle. Throughout his life he was opposed to socialism, yet close to his death
welcomed Benito Mussolini.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
He was a French economist, the first anarchist and often considered the father of anarchism. He
unsuccessfully attempted to create a national bank funded by an income tax on capitalists and
share-holders. He favored worker cooperatives and worker ownership over private or public
ownership. The first libertarian socialist theorist, Proudhon developed the concept of mutualism.
David Ricardo
Ricardo is a British Classical economist, one of the most influential classical economists among
Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus. His theory of comparative advantage serves as the
cornerstone of the argument for free trade and is widely influential in the economics of
international trade. He developed the classical theory of rent as well as the labor theory of value.
Jacques Rueff
Rueff was a French economist. He was influential proponent of the gold standard and leading
member of the Mont Pelerin society following World War II who remained a critic of Keynesian
economics throughout his life. He was a strong supporter of European integration in the 1950s.
Paul Samuelson
Samuelsom was an American Neo-Keynesian economist, one of the most important economists
of the 20th century. He served as the Keynesian counterpart to the Monetaritst Milton Friedman
at the University of Chicago. He was a contributor to Neoclassical Synthesis which,
incorporating elements of Keynesian and Neoclassical methodology, has formed basis of modern
mainstream economics.
Jean Baptiste Say
Say was a French Classical liberal economist. Although best known for Say's Law, Say merely
popularized it, he did not create it. In favor of free trade, competition, and deregulation of
businesses. As a publicist, Say expounded the ideas of Adam Smith in the periodical, La Decade
philosophique, litteraire, et politique.
Adam Smith
Smith is a Scottish Classical economist, considered the father of economics. His magnum opus
Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was the first modern work of
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economics. Smith is still one of the most important philosophers of political economy, providing
the basis for classical liberalism, free enterprise, property rights, and free trade.
Thomas Sowell
Chicago School economist and contemporary conservative thinker. Sowell has authored more
than 30 books, including Basic Economics, which seeks to explain the principles of classical
economics to the layman. He has written extensively on the economics of race and on political
economy.
George Stigler
Chicago School economist who is best known for Economic Theory of Regulation which asserts
that interest groups use government to further their aims through favorable legislation. His most
groundbreaking contribution to economics with his work on the economics of information
arguably created a new field of study.
Joseph Stiglitz
Stiglitz is an American Keynesian economist. Critical of globalization and "free market
fundamentalism.", he won a Nobel Prize in 2001 for his work on asymmetric information which
gives credence to further government intervention and which denies the existence of the invisible
hand. The Shapiro-Stiglitz model gives an explanation for unemployment at equilibrium.
Thorstein Veblen
American Institutional economist, Veblen was the leader of the progressive movement. A witty
critic of capitalism, Veblen was sympathetic to state ownership of industry yet differed from
socialists of his time. His work on conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure provided a
transformative perspective in the institutional school of economic thought.
Leon Walras
French Lausanne school economist, Walras was the father of general equilibrium theory and one
of three leaders of the marginalist revolution. His definition of an amoral utility or value was a
fundamental concept in neoliberal thought. Walrasian general equilibrium became the preferred
tool of scientific school economists.
Knut Wicksell
He is Swedish Stockholm School economist who synthesized the economic thought of Leon
Walras, Eugen Bohm-Bawerk, and David Ricardo into economist's economics. His most
important contribution to economics was his theory of interest which made a distinction between
natural and money rate of interest. This created the framework for endogenous money.
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Grand Economic Council
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