Bryan Caplan is one of my favorite contemporary social scientists. My fondness of him grew from the dozens of times that I have taken the Libertarian Purity Test and my reading through his vast corpus of communist, anarchist, and libertarian writings.
But, I have always had a bit of a bone to pick with him. Why does he consistently deny that he is, if nothing else, an Austrian fellow-traveler? Yes, I am aware that he has written on why he is not an Austrian economist and, as he contends, the failed Austrian search for realistic foundations. But, his theoretical and empirical development of rational-irrationality accents the centrality of the institutional context to human choice. Isn’t this a key Austrian principle?
Will someone help me to understand why Bryan Caplan avoids the label Austrian?
- Brian Pitt
Not sure that the focus on the institutional context is a distinctive Austrian feature: try methodological individualism, subjectivism, unintended consequences and heterogenous nature of capital goods and a few other things.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/AustrianSchoolofEconomics.html
Thanks for the link Rafe.
You’re right, the institutional context is not a distinctive Austrian focus. But, it is a key focus of the modal Austrian economist. Do you disagree? And, it appears to be a major focus of Caplan’s research agenda into democratic decision-making. Caplan, I would argue, has taken what Austrians describe as the “facts of the social sciences” (i.e., what people believe) to demonstrate that social scientists should close their eyes to neither fools nor folly when attempting to comprehend democratic decision-making. This is just one of the reasons that I consider him to be an Austrian fellow-traveler.
One of the odd things about the AE movement is that some people in it seem overly concerned with classification schemes for economics and ideas. I’ve heard people give hourlong lectures about whether or not this or that person qualifies as a Keynesian or mainstream. Usually this is done without adopting precise definitions of terms like “fellow traveler” “mainstream” or “Austrian”, and without precise definitions you really cannot answer these questions. If resolving the classification scheme debates were important enough to tell us the accuracy, quality level or value of someone’s work, then it would be worth it. Since it isn’t, I would rather spend my time reading and understanding things.
Bryan Caplan has nothing against math or statistics in economics. He is more or less in favor of the basic textbooks like Mankiw that are considered “mainstream economics”. He has nothing fundamentally against the typical econ departments, textbooks, courses or economists that aren’t labeled “Austrian”. Because many of those, especially outside academia, who feel the need to use the “Austrian” label, do not fit the above description, it is very suitable for Caplan to call himself “not Austrian”. These labels often serve as a short way to signal whether or not people should expect your ideas to be much like those of others with whose ideas they are already familiar. It’s more of a one-word advertising thing than a precise distinction that people have defined in writing.
Anonymous, your point is well-taken. Truth be told, I doubt that, today, anybody really cares what “school of thought” one adheres to. One’s work will speak for itself (I hope!).
However, I think that you may be overlooking the fact that Dr. Caplan, in a way brought this on himself. That is, he promulgated his non-Austrianism (over 12 years ago) – from his Intellectual Autobiography to his Why I am Not an Austrian Economist through to The Austrian Search for Realistic Foundations.
I should acknowledge that I brought this up because his empirical investigations of rational-irrationality are distinctively Misesian and Hayekian. Though Caplan credits Wittman for “awakening him from his political-economic slumbers,” I would bet that his impressive conversance with the Austrian literature kept one of his eyes open. A cursory look at his most recent work, e.g., Mises’ Democracy-Dictatorship Theorem and Mises, Bastiat, Public Opinion, and Public Choice, to name a few, illustrates this.
Finally, what contemporary Austrian has something “against math or statistics in economics?”
The short answer is: Don’t Know. Don’t Care.
Not very interested in a scorekeeping game. That’s another thing I find odd about the AE movement is that people who associate with it often seem hyper-sensitive to defend anyone who they consider “Austrian”. Sometimes it’s almost like an inner city gang, where you’re not allowed to have an opinion about the guys who wear red shirts or something.
Please do not respond to the above paragraph by saying “which contemporary Austrian acts hyper-sensitive like an inner city gang…?” because then you’d be doing exactly what I was hoping you wouldn’t do.
I would like to insist on a real, precise definition of “Austrian”, with adherence to the definition, before getting into one of those discussions. I definitely don’t consider self-description a good enough definition. I’ve never been given a definition that manages to include all who use the “Austrian” label, and also exclude all people who are not even sympathetic to such a thing as “Austrian Economics”.
Almost everybody with whom I’ve argued, both in person and online, who was sympathetic to AE had something against math and statistics in economics, some of them very rigidly and clearly. Whenever I say that I often get “they’re not professors!”, and they are not. But, those lives are every bit as real as professors, and I count them as part of the entire AE phenomenon. Those people typically learned their ideas about AE through one of a handful of thinktanks who have professors involved, and those professors chose to include some things and not others. Some of the official materials of Mises Institute have anti-mathematical statements in them. Lew Rockwell’s brochure “Why Austrian Economics Matters” is an example. This brochure is often the “official” introduction a “devotee” has to AE, and I consider that a problem, as I am not very keen on the essay. You might say “Rockwell isn’t a professor!” and I am aware of that, but I don’t agree with academia-only descriptions of AE, because even the academics involved in it tend to be past students or lecturers at the non-academia think tanks that popularize AE. I’ve never heard a self-described Austrian professor, certainly not one associated with LvMI, say clearly they’re against that brochure or that they disagree with it.
It’s one thing for someone to say “Hey look, I’m not against math and statistics”. I also look at what people do. Do they use it in their work. Do they read/write for the journals that use it, or the ones they don’t. Do they assign it when they teach. If you look both at what people say and at what they do, then I believe that a dissatisfaction, disgruntlement, anger, second-guessing, lack of participation in, or something like that, regarding the post World War II mathematization of academic economics tends to be one of the main, very noticeable characteristics common among those who associate with “Austrian Economics”. The others include free market political views, some level of respect for Hayek and/or Mises, and sympathy for a monetary arrangement other than a central bank.
I think the centrality of his use of “rational rationality” is why he may not be such the Austrian after all. You’re familiar with Jeff Friedman’s critique?
I was wondering about this the other day, and it certainly does seem odd. All the more so since James Buchanan and Leland Yeager consider themselves “fellow travelers”, and there are perhaps as many affinities between Yeager and Buchanan and the Austrian school as there are between Caplan and the Austrian school.