I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

E.C. Pasour, Jr. 257
In preparing the paper, I wrote to Professor T.W. Schultz (later Nobel Laureate in
economics) at the University of Chicago, explaining the nature of the paper I was working
on, and requested his papers pertinent to the topic. Professor Schultz shared the letter with
a University colleague, Professor Edward Shils, then on the Committee on Social Thought
and editor of Minerva, an interdisciplinary journal published in the United Kingdom.
Professor Shils indicated that the topic was “of utmost interest” to him as editor of Minerva
and requested that I send him a preliminary draft of my conference paper to receive his
“. . . comments on editorial and substantive matters before the final version is completed.”
Following his review, Professor Shils indicated that he would like to publish the paper
subject to a number of stylistic changes and amplification of certain parts of the paper. The
suggested changes were spelled out in six single-spaced typed pages! Following several followup
exchanges, the paper (“Financial Support and Freedom of Inquiry in Agricultural
Economics”) was published in the spring 1988 issue of Minerva.
In 1992, in an invited address to the New Zealand Association of Economists, I suggested
that there are ample opportunities for economists to contribute to public policy
because of information and incentive problems that are endemic in the political process. I
contrasted this position with George Stigler’s argument that the political process is efficient.
Daniel Klein later wrote an article in the Eastern Economic Journal (spring 2001) also disputing
Stigler’s thesis that economists’ persuasive power to improve public policy is negligible.
After reading Dan’s paper, it was apparent that our ideas on this topic were similar, and I
sent him a copy of my own paper.
Shortly after, Dan arranged a session at the Southern Economics Association meetings
that focused on the extent to which economists who do research on policy issues express
judgment favoring reform in the direction of economic liberalization. The topics covered
included licensing, rail transit, taxi deregulation, minimum wages and/or unions, and postal
services, and agricultural economics. Coincidentally, Dan was in the process of initiating
a new on-line journal—Economic Journal Watch—designed to serve as a forum for discourse
about economic research and the economics profession.
My Economic Journal Watch piece “Agricultural Economists and the State” is consistent
with Rich Wilcke’s thesis that agricultural economists have tended to support government
intervention in U.S. agriculture—a problem that was to be addressed by his ISMA dream,
some 25 years earlier. The article supports the thesis that the mode of funding agricultural
policy research in the Land Grant University–USDA complex makes it less likely that
agricultural economists will “go against the grain” to support efforts to liberalize U.S. farm
policy. My efforts to do so have relied to a considerable extent on insights from Austrian
economics—insights that were acquired, as described above, independently of my formal
graduate work in economics. These ideas enabled me to take a fresh approach in the analysis
of U.S. farm policy and other government programs. This approach also enabled me to
meet and interact with a distinguished group of individuals that would not have been possible
had I followed the approach taken by most other agricultural economists.
E. C. Pasour, Jr., is professor emeritus from the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics,
North Carolina State University.