6 - The Individuals and Their Connections

Summary

the ideological spectrum. Buchanan wrote against Hayek’s evolutionary efficiency claims as well as efficiency claims in rational expectations theories. Hayek’s endorsement of the “liberal dictator” provides the background for Buchanan’s concern with anti-democratic elements of the Mont Pelerin Society. The demise of the Soviet Union has obscured how controversial Nutter’s NBER work was. In the early 1960s, a principles of economics textbook labeled Nutter’s results, reported in Hazlitt’s Newsweek column, as biased. Nutter and Rostow, who differed politically, agreed in their analyses of Soviet growth that Russian culture persisted in spite of the transition to the Soviet Union. Tullock’s long-standing friendship with Popper was critical for the early Virginia School’s analytical egalitarianism in which the motivation of the economist is no different than the motivation of those in the economist’s model. This speaks to ideological motivation. Tullock held that, since economics did not enforce replication, it lacked standing as science and was instead akin to a “racket.”