Mark Skousen is one of my favorite living economists because
of my bias for the practical. Skousen has a PhD in economics, but he chose to
pursue a career in the private sector as an investment adviser rather than one
in academia or government. We need more great economists like Skousen. Their impact will be much greater than that of academics because those of us
who need practical advice are much greater than the number of people who will
major in economics in college. Also, if you wander through the blogs of
Austrian academics you’ll find that academics spend a great deal of time on Quixotic
efforts like trying to change Fed policy or reform mainstream economics.
Laissez Faire Books has released a collection of essays by Skousen with the clever title A Viennese Waltz Down Wall Street: Austrian Economics for Investors. It
answers the classic book A Random Walk
down Wall Street, by Burt Malkiel that promotes the mainstream vision of
the Efficient Market Hypothesis.
