If Bohm-Bawerk Had Given Us a Reading List, We Would Have Thrown It Back At Him

Henry Regnery’s Memoirs of a Dissident Publisher show a side of Austrian-born economist Joseph Schumpeter seldom seen elsewhere:

At an early lecture he gave us a reading list, with the remark, “If one of our professors at the University of Vienna, Bohm-Bawerk, for example, had given us a reading list, we would have thrown it back at him.” The author of one of the books we were expected to read was the English economist Joan Robinson. Being young men, we indulged in a certain amount of discussion about what a lady economist might look like, how old she might be, whether she was married, and so on. One day in class, when her book had come up, one of the students surrendered to his curiousity and asked, “What does Joan Robinson look like?” Schumpeter considered a moment, his head a little to one side and a finger against his nose, as though deep in thought, then with a twinkle in his fine brown eyes answered, “I would give her about a B plus.”

Addendum: Yikes… I hope Schumpeter knew her much earlier (which of course, he did: she would have been in her 30s when Regnery was in Schumpeter’s course).

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