See Update below:
In today’s print edition (yesterday’s electronic edition) of the Wall Street Journal, Mark Skousen tells of being turned down by the president of the American Economic Association for a session on the work of Friedrich Hayek.
Skousen notes that Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economist who is the president of the AEA, turned down his idea. Skousen writes:
It should also be noted that the American Economic Association’s organizing committee greenlit some 45 sessions devoted to topics of diversity, equity, inclusion, inequality, gender, belonging, segregation, sexual harassment, discrimination, race and LBGT.
Sometimes when I read a WSJ op/ed, I go to the discussion on line to see what people are saying and, occasionally, to add my own thoughts. I did both today. Most of the commenters are people I haven’t heard of. But on the comments today, one name stood out: David Autor, a well-known economist at MIT who, with co-authors David Dorn and Gordon H. Hanson, has written about the negative effective on U.S. employment after trade was opened with China. (Other economists have taken issue with his findings, by the way.)
But it wasn’t just his name that stuck out; it was his comment.
Here it is, in its entirety:
Hayek was a genius, a sentiment that I suspect 99.9% of AEA members would endorse, including certainly AEA President Lawrence Katz. Not every panel about Hayek is brilliant, however.
I’m actually not sure that Hayek was a genius, except in the 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration sense. Nevertheless, his ideas were very important.
My pleasant surprise is that Autor suspects that 99.9% of AEA members would endorse the idea that Hayek was a genius. I would be surprised if more than 70% of AEA members had heard of Hayek, and I would be even more surprised if more than 40% of AEA members had read him. It’s hard to think someone’s a genius if you’ve never read his work.
UPDATE: David Skarbek points out that the AEA had a session on Hayek at its annual meetings in 2023. Here’s the link.
I agree that less than 50% of all economists have any significant/actually true understanding of who Hayek was, for sure... pretty far from the 99% claimed by Autor.
Amen, David!