El Nobel de economía Paul Samuelson ha fallecido este domingo a la edad de 94 años. Las distintas ediciones del manual de Samuelson fueron auténticos best-sellers, traducidos a decenas de idiomas y usados como libros de cabecera en las universidades. Samuelson gozó de gran prestigio e influyó a célebres economistas mainstream como Robert Solow, Paul Krugman, George Akerlof, Robert Engle III, Robert C. Merton, Lawrence Klein, Franco Modigliani o Joseph Stiglitz. Una de sus citas más famosas: "No me importa quien escriba las leyes del país, o diseñe sus tratados, mientras a mí me dejen escribir sus manuales de economía".
En el blog del Wall Street Journal varios Nobel y economistas le dedican unas palabras de reconomiento (HT: Marginal Revolution)
Desde posiciones más pro-mercado, en particular desde el punto de vista de los seguidores de la Escuela Austriaca, fue una desdicha que Paul Samuelson escribiera los manuales de economía del país. Juan Ramón Rallo critica su metodología neoclásica y sus enseñanzas keynesianas, que tanto daño han hecho al progreso social, y nos recuerda aquel vergonzoso pasaje en el que decía que la Unión Soviética demostraba que una economía planificada era sostenible en el tiempo y podía producir más riqueza que una economía de mercado. Esto lo escribía nada más y nada menos que en 1989, justo antes de que se demoronara todo el sistema socialista:
La economía soviética es una prueba de que, al contrario de lo que muchos escépticos piensan hoy, una economía socialista puede funcionar e incluso prosperar. Es decir, una sociedad en la que la mayoría de las decisiones económicas son adoptadas de manera administrativa, donde los beneficios no sean el motivo principal detrás de la producción, puede crecer durante largos períodos de tiempo.
Incluso había llegado a pronosticar que la Unión Soviética superaría en riqueza a Estados Unidos en cuestión de pocos años.
En este contexto vale la pena leer la dura reseña que hiciera Murray Rothbard de la novena edición del tratado de Paul Samuelson, Economics. Un fragmento:
Samuelson concluded the preface to his new edition by asserting, in his typically breezy style: "My envy goes out to the reader, setting out to explore the exciting world of economics for the first time. . . may I only say, bon appetit!" (p. xii). In contrast, my heart goes out to the poor bewildered undergraduate, confronted with this gigantic stew, ranging from opinionated wisecracks to the Giffen Paradox to marginal productivity analysis to Harrod-Domar-Modigliani growth models to notes on economists past and present to the latest ultrasophistication in reswitching analysis. What in the world can he make of all this? It is no wonder that economics is almost universally the most disliked subject in the college curriculum. The undergraduate is presented with no clear and coherent picture, no cogent guidelines on what economics is all about. Instead, beginning by knowing next to nothing about the field, he can only hold on, memorize like mad, and pray for the course to be over and his six credits achieved. Not that the other major texts are much better; Samuelson's Economics differs from its rivals largely in being bigger, more indigestible, and filled with the flip and unsupported wisecracks with which Samuelson is wont to dismiss deviant economic views.
Otros dos comentarios austriacos que me gustaría destacar son el de Mario Rizzo (The Death of Paul Samuelson and Selection Bias) y Peter Boettke (Paul Samuelson).
Rizzo:
The problem for Samuelson’s theoretical contributions is that one cannot easily point to any way in which economics is better rather than just different because of them. But even the differences are in a self-referential world. It is not as if because of his contributions we put a man on the moon or cured venereal disease.
What he did accomplish was a kind of methodological exclusivism. Economists more and more looked down on the “literary economists” who came before them. An idea plainly in Adam Smith became a “new idea” because someone was able to oversimplify it and put in mathematics. Economists overestimated their contributions to knowledge because they confused knowledge about the world with refinements in theory. The fact that Keynes and Hayek became so relevant (once again) to current events and policy made clear, I believe, that refinements of theory were of limited value in understanding the world. (...)
So, all in all, Paul Samuelson’s influence on economics was something I could have lived very well indeed without.
Boettke:
[The] battle is the one between Samuelson and Mises, and the fateful choice was the late 1940s. Rather than following Mises's Human Action, the economics profession went the path of Samuelson's Foundations. Formalism was intereprted as synonymous with logical rigor, and in the subsequent decade positivistic testing was interpreting as synonymous with empirical analysis. By the 1960s, formalism and positivism transformed the science of economics so that the Misesian understanding of "theory" and "history" was actually completely dismissed as a relic of a pre-scientific age. (...)
I have stated on more than one ocassion that I believe Samuelson will be remembered in the same way as Sir William Petty is remembered, not as Adam Smith is remembered. His substantive contributions (as oppopsed to form in which he stated arguments) are not immediately obvious to pinpoint. We must always remember that Samuelson was the great anti-Misesian of 20th century economics, and in my book that translates into a force for anti-economics despite all the scientific accolades, awards, honorary degrees, and reverence by his peers he was granted in his lifetime.
Que descanse en paz.
Actualización: José Carlos Rodríguez escribe sobre Samuelson en su columna de Factual.
David Henderson en el Wall Street Journal:
His influence has been profound, but the mathematization of economics has been a mixed blessing. The downside is that the math hurdle in leading U.S. economics programs is now so high that people who grasp the power of economic concepts to explain human behavior are losing out in the competition to mathematicians. (...)
Samuelson, like Milton Friedman, had a regular column in Newsweek (from 1966 to 1981). Unlike Friedman, he did not have a passionate belief in free markets—or, for that matter, in government intervention in markets. His pleasure seemed to come from providing new proofs, demonstrating technical finesse, turning a clever phrase, and understanding the world better.
Comentario de Richard Ebeling en Thinkmarkets:
His “Economics” textbook indoctrinated generations of students into the “failures” of the market that could only be corrected by discretionary fiscal and monetary policy guided by wise and competent economics “doctors” like himself.
He was one of the intellectual godfathers of those who tried to introduce the social engineering mindset during the Kennedy “New Frontier”days — that generation of the “best and the brightest” that gave us, finally, both the Vietnam War, the Great Society, and Stagflation.
Citoyen le dedica una entrada muy laudatoria. Kantor matiza en los comentarios.
