December 7, 2007

Creative Destruction's Reconstruction: Joseph Schumpeter Revisited

By J. BRADFORD DELONG

My guess is that average literate Americans know of three 20th-century economists: John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, and Alan Greenspan. Perhaps they also know of Paul Samuelson (but as textbook author, not economic theorist), of Friedrich Hayek (but think that he is the father of an actress), and of John Kenneth Galbraith (as William F. Buckley Jr.'s friend who appeared on TV). The rest of us disappear into a blur of gray suits, spectacles, and, usually, baldness — an