[…] I must out of courtesy and caution reserve judgment on any laws that Professor Stigler may unveil. For, as I learned when our friendship began long ago, George Stigler can do anything– anything but be boring.
-Paul Samuelson-
Here’s the Sunday read I recommend to you: a great 1963 dialogue on the “proper economic role of the state” between two intellectual giants, George Stigler(*, **) and Paul Samuelson. More actual than ever. If only all current policy and academic debates had this flavor!
* inspired by Steven Landsburg’s recent blogposts on Stigler, here and here. Echoing Landsburg, you must absolutely read Stigler’s “The Intellectual and the Marketplace” and “Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist”, if you haven’t already done so. Indeed, he would likely be the champion of all Econ bloggers.
** read fast Milton Friedman’s short biographical essay on Stigler and Stigler’s 1982 Nobel prize lecture “The process and progress of economics“
