I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

252 I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians
(when contrasted with economists generally) much less critical of government intervention
in agriculture.
I suspect that my exposure to Austrian economics came later in life than it does for
many, if not most, economists today. My introduction to, and appreciation of, the ideas of
Hayek, Mises, and other Austrians did not occur until I was finished with graduate school.
It is my impression that most current economics graduate students have at least been exposed
to Austrianism while in graduate school—even if the introduction was only to show how
unrealistic such ideas are. The increased familiarity with—though not necessarily greater
understanding of—Austrian economics by economists upon the completion of their graduate
work may be one measure of the increased impact that these ideas now have within the
profession.
My graduate and early professional work—in agricultural production economics and
marketing—was quite conventional at that time for economists majoring in agricultural
economics. In most land-grant universities, agricultural economists are in a separate
department from other economists. At the Ph.D. level of graduate studies, I took courses
in agricultural economics, including agricultural policy, agricultural production economics,
and agricultural marketing, in the Department of Agricultural Economics. Micro,
macro, international trade, other theory and applied non-agricultural courses, such as
industrial organization, were taken in the Department of Economics. I do not recall the
ideas of Hayek or Mises being discussed—or their names being mentioned (although it
is quite possible that they were)—during my graduate work, even in the history of economic
thought courses.
My first exposure to Austrian economics that I can recall—and its relationship to the
Chicago approach to neoclassical theory—occurred shortly after completion of graduate
school in an article by Israel Kirzner that was published in The Intercollegiate Review.
Writing in the mid-1960s, Kirzner’s focus was on the minority of economists who defend
the efficiency of the “unhampered market economy” and stress that “measures put into
effect by governments must lead to consequences worse than the evils that they seek to
avoid.” Kirzner pointed out that most of the economists who emphasized efficiency and
other advantages of the free market were associated either with the “Chicago School” or
with “. . . an expanding, well-articulated influence that clearly traced back to the Austrian
subjectivist school.” Kirzner held that the influence of the latter school was “almost synonymous
with Ludwig von Mises.”
Kirzner devoted most of the article to showing how the Austrian subjectivist school
differed from the Chicago School. He stressed the differences between Austrian and Chicago
theories concerning the role of equilibrium and entrepreneurship, the role of empirical
investigation, and the concept of monopoly. I was well aware of the work of Friedman,
Knight, Stigler, and other prominent members of the Chicago School, but knew nothing
about the “Austrian School” of economics prior to that time. Moreover, the distinctions
between the schools emphasized by Kirzner had little immediate impact on my views about
the appropriate approach in economic analysis.
Although I also read Hayek’s “Use of Knowledge in Society” around this time in my
intellectual odyssey, I failed to grasp the implications of the article for government