Menger and Bohm-Bawerk would occasionally attempt to help their colleagues. Bohm-Bawerk’s appointment at the University of Innsbruck was partly due to Menger’s support, and the same applied to Wieser’s appointment at the University of Prague.

Bohm-Bawerk, in turn, assisted Schumpeter in getting his first couple of academic appointments.

But, in general, the German historicists were far more “strategic” in this sense than the Austrians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Richard Ebeling

Abstract:
Using Latour’s concepts of “actor-network” and “translation,” the authors show that neoliberalism’s success in Eastern Europe is best analyzed not as an institutional form diffused along the nodes of a network, but as itself an actor-network based on a particular trans- lation strategy that construes socialism as a laboratory of economic knowledge. They argue that socialism was made into a laboratory of economic knowledge during the socialist calculation debate of the 1920s and 1930s. An extensive debate during the Cold War is also documented and shows that a transnational network continued to be organized around attempts to connect the results obtained in the socialist laboratory with debates and struggles in Western econom- ics. Finally, the drafting of transition blueprints in postcommunist Eastern Europe after 1989, with the participation of American econ- omists, is shown to be a continuation of this transnational network.

Danny L. McDaniel
Lafayette, Indiana

I think that a lot of Austrian Economists make the mistake that they assume since Hayek, Mises, and the gang have it right on economics, they must also have the answers as to spreading the message. But this idea is really ridiculous.

You read Hayek to find out what you should do policy wise, but you don’t hire the guy to be your campaign manager. You hire someone like Frank Luntz to help you out with that.

Also, there is the sacred cow of all think tanks and academia that good ideas have consequences. But you look around the world and it’s just blatantly not true.

And lastly, spreading the movement through academia is treated like magical fairie dust. Just write in academic publicatioins and then this magically filters to the rest of the population and you are saving the world by writing in places that no one reads. This is just plain delusional.

thanks for this post. As you know I share your concerns about DB. However, I think we have to acknowledge that last years DB started to reflect to a certain extent on its limitations.

Nevertheless, with regard to simplistic policy advice there is a “brilliant” example, which was recently posted on the DB Blog.
The simple message presented there is here. This sounds very nice but taking a look at the argument of the post I’d like to question very much what the DB-Team is trying to sell us here.

They refer to WEF’s Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) and argue: “economies rank best in the Doing Business are among the most competitive around the globe. In fact, 19 out of the 25 best performing economies from Doing Business 2008 and 17 from Doing Business 2009 are ranked among the 25 most competitive economies in the Global Competitiveness Report 2008-2009.”

But actually the GCI consists – for good reason – of various other indicators and not just of the “institutions” pillar.
Actually further comparing the ranking of 181 countries in Doing Business 2009 (DB) and the ranking of 134 countries in the GCI 08/09 it is easy to find cases, which from my point of view, rather seem to illustrate that DB cannot explain much with regard to economic development and competitiveness. Look at these discrepancies:
India DB:122 GCI: 50
China DB: 83 GCI: 30
Costa Rica DB:117 GCI: 59
Georgia DB: 15 GCI: 90

Let me also point to another aspect. Take two other statements in the post:

“Smart regulation is not about regulating less” and ”It is therefore not surprising that economies rank best in the Doing Business are among the most competitive around the globe.” We should remind ourselves that Doing Business actually ranks those economies top, which are regulating less – so DB is to a significant extent about regulating less.

As it reads in the evaluation of the Independent Evaluation Group (p.6): “Seven of the 10 DB indicators exhibit a preference for less regulation—3 most notably: employing workers, paying taxes, and dealing with licenses.”

Well, we’ll see what DB 2010 brings.

F & C also influenced Sen. Wagner & FDR — as well as most economists in America.

It can even be argued that Keynes is simply a British/Marshall interpretation of F & C.