News via Dani Rodrik on Twitter. He was a great economist, whose influence was nonetheless far greater outside his academic specialization than inside it. Exit, Voice and Loyalty is the book that will be remembered, but his essays gathered in Rival Views of Market Society and other volumes glistened with insights and were wonderfully written to boot. His book on National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade, which turned his empirical work on how the Nazis reshaped trade relations to their own advantage is less influential than it deserves to be, because it is so hard to get, but nonetheless had substantial influence on the field of international relations. I don’t know enough to say much about his work on development, except that people who know more than me took it seriously. He deserves a good biography – his life was nearly as extraordinary as his thought.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Should have won a Nobel.
I can’t find a better place to put this, but congratulations; your blog was just cited in Richard Posner’s decision in Moore vs Madigan!
Link here http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/tmp/NY0SHUQY.pdf
Exit, Voice and Loyalty made an enormous impression on me as an undergrad; the elegance and clarity of the argument was something to behold.
Indeed, Jeremy Adelman has written his biography. It will be published in april of next year:
http://www.amazon.com/Worldly-Philosopher-Odyssey-Albert-Hirschman/dp/0691155674/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355268391&sr=8-1&keywords=jeremy+adelman+albert+o+hirschman