Comments on: Axel Leijonhufvud and a Bit of Autobiography

By: Tomas

Tomas — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 04:01:22 +0000

I ve found On Keynesian Economics… in a way almost identically. I used to stay long hours in Congress Public Library (Buenos Aires), and some day some quite intriguing title appeared in the searching PC. Even more intriguing taking into account that I was rather confused about the meaning of standard macroeconomics. So I studied that oasis-book, so far almost the only one that, in a historical sense, relates economics with thinking.
I use to say that Leijonhufvud has achieved some kind of theorem about the relation between (monetary) regimes and microeconomics. Indeed, if you take a look in his writings chronologically, it is possible to realize that after that book, he departure towards microfoundations and gradually reached monetary regimes theory. So the economy may be said to run within that two-sided world.
Among the authors Leijonhufvud let me, apart from Keynes itself, are such like Ingo Barens, and even further, through Keynes, it made it possible for me to understand the exchanges.

By: Nicolai Foss

Nicolai Foss — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 12:21:47 +0000

Perhaps the first explicit link between Leijonhufvud and Austrianism (apart from the links that Axel himself established) was made by Gerald P. O’Driscoll in Economics as a Coordination Problem (1977). L. was the Chairman of O’Driscoll’s committee.

By: Peter Boettke

Peter Boettke — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 12:13:41 +0000

Leijonhufvud’s coordination Keynesianism was a critical part of my own education as well. When I was earning my graduate degree the world of economics had decidedly moved in the new classical direction, but I was fortunate enough to have professors that looked to Leijonhufvud’s work for a more reasonable microfoundations. It was the Leijonhufvud-Yeager sort of macroeconomics that we were taught to appreciate at that time. Steve Horwitz’s Microfoundations and Macroeconomics: An Austrian Perspective tries to summarize this teaching.

By: Peter Klein

Peter Klein — Wed, 31 May 2006 15:47:45 +0000

Another economist strongly influenced by both Leijonhufvud and Hayek is Roger Garrison. The following remarks from the preface to Garrison's Time and Money are particularly pertinent to some of this blog's favorite themes: "Leijonhufvud, who was also a participant at the conference on Meltzer's book, has influenced my own thinking in more subtle -- though no less substantial -- ways. Leijonhufvud (1968) is a treasure-trove of Keynes-inspired insights into the workings of the macroeconomy, and Leijonhufvud (1981) links many of those insights to the writings of Knut Wicksell in a way that the Austrian economists, who themselves owe so much to Wicksell, cannot help but appreciate. Though Leijonhufvud has often been critical of Austrian theory, he has always seen merit in emphasizing the heterogeneity of capital goods and the subjectivity of entrepreneurial expectations (1981b: 197) and has recently called for renewed attention to the problems of intertemporal coordination (1998: 197-202). "