Re:The Hangover Theory
by gabrielroth on Saturday February 14, 2009 @05:56PM
(#481508)
The substance of his criticism of the Austrian school is in his fifth paragraph. It's not "sneering" or a straw-man attack; it asks a question that (Krugman claims) the Austrian economists' theories can't answer. If you want to defend them, try addressing that question rather than making irrelevant claims for Hayek's brilliance.
davetufts already covered it by posting http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=53
Re:The Hangover Theory
by joe_the_user on Saturday February 14, 2009 @05:00PM
(#481463)
The worst error of this piece is the nebulous concept of "good times". Japan in the 1980s and the US recently didn't have generic "good times" but an ill-considered economic bubbles. Even at the height of supposed "good times", there was lot of wealth transfer from the productive sector of the economy to the speculative side. Some ordinary people paid real money for houses of inflate value prices and others attained illusory wealth by watching their house values increase - upshot was not "good times".
Regardless of whether all the Austrian school's claims turn out to be correct or not, they certainly deserve a seat at the table. Hayek, in particular, was a true polymath, contributing brilliant ideas to everything from philosophy of science to biologically-grounded psychology. Read the first several chapters of Law, Legislation, and Liberty, and decide for yourself if Krugman has any right to sneer at the "supposedly deep Austrian theorists".