The MIT Economics Canon (?)
off the top of my head and incomplete
Tyler Cowen points to Jon Hartley on the Chicago economics canon and to Vlad Tarko on the Austrian economics canon. Note that I have read hardly any of these, and yet I claim to know something about both Chicago and Austrian economics.
Below is a stab at an MIT economics canon. I have read many of these, but it was a long time ago. In fact, think of this as the pre-1980 MIT canon. And even for that it is incomplete. I got tired before I could get to Stiglitz or Weitzman or Kindleberger.
Paul Samuelson, “Protection and Real Wages” with W. F. Stolper (1941)
Samuelson, Foundations of Economic Analysis
Samuelson, “International Trade and Equalization of Factor Prices” (1948)
Samuelson, Linear Programming and Economic Analysis, with Robert Dorfman and Robert Solow (1958
Samuelson, “An Exact Consumption-Loan Model of Interest with or without the Social Contrivance of Money” (1958)1
Samuelson, “Analytical Aspects of Anti-Inflation Policy,” with Robert Solow (the Phillips Curve paper)
Samuelson, “Proof that Properly Anticipated Stock Prices fluctuate Randomly” (1965)
Samuelson, “A Summing Up” (1966) on the heated, silly debate over “re-switching”
Samuelson, “What Classical and Neoclassical Monetary Theory Really was” (1968)2
Solow, “A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth,” (1956)
Solow, “Technical Change and the Aggregate Production Function” (1957)
Solow, “Capital-Labor Substitution and Economic Efficiency,” with K.J. Arrow, H.B. Chenery, and B.S. Minhas (1961)
Franco Modigliani, “Liquidity Preference and the Theory of Interest and Money” (1944)
Modigliani, “Utility Analysis and the Consumption Function: An Interpretation of Cross-Section Data” (1954) with Richard Brumberg
Modigliani, “The cost of capital, corporate finance, and the theory of investment” (1958) with Merton Miller3
Modigliani, “The relative stability of the velocity of money and the investment multiplier” (1965) with Albert Ando
Modigliani, “The Life Cycle Hypothesis of Saving, the Demand for Wealth, and the Supply of Capital” (1966)
Rudiger Dornbusch, “Expectations and Exchange Rate Dynamics” (1976)
Stanley Fischer, “Long-term Contracts, Rational Expectations, and the Optimal Money Supply Rule” (1977)
It is known as the “overlapping generations model.” I hate the way economists have come to use (abuse) this paper.
Not nearly as well known as Samuelson’s other works, but this is one of my favorites, for its scathing opening
because of Miller, it is also listed in Hamilton’s Chicago canon
I think of my doctoral training (Claremont 1979-84) as Virginia-influenced but I read more than half of this list. Dan Vandermeulen taught the entire micro sequence using linear programming and set theory. I’ll have to look back at Hartley’s list to compare whether I got more MIT than Chicago.
My BA in Econ from UC Santa Cruz required no reading from any of these canons. Did anyone have required reading from these canons for their BA in econ?
In order to graduate from any humanities department one should be required to read at least three from the Chicago or Austrian School canon. All in favor?