THE ECONOMICS OF TIME AND IGNORANCE by Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. and Mario J. Rizzo New York: Basil Blackwell, 1985. 261pp., $34.95 O'Driscoll and Rizzo, two leading exponents of the Austrian subjectivist school of economics, claim to provide an original and powerful challenge to mainstream neoclassical economics. They also argue that there is much common ground between the Austrian approach and the recent development of Post Keynesian analysis. In this essay, the validity of such claims is analyzed, and the shortcomings (...) of the Austrian school's approach vis?à?vis Post Keynesian and neoclassical analysis is developed. (shrink)

Most economists—old and new classical, old and new Keynesian, and Austrian postulate an immutable reality unchangeable by any human action. They differ only over the amount of information decisionmakers have, in the short run, about this unchanging reality. Keynes and the Post Keynesians provide an axiomatic alternative model that presumes a transmutable economic reality. Runde, Torr, Prychitko, and Boehm and Farmer fail to adequately address this dichotomous analysis of reality in responding to my review of O'Driscoll and Rizzo's book.