Economics Personality: An Evolutionary Process

My Economics Personality

I study and "do" economics all the time. But have you ever stepped back and thought about your economics personality?

For me, it has been evolving throughout my life. When I was younger, I would have identified much more with economists like John Maynard Keynes or Paul Samuelson—focusing on centralized equilibrium models, state intervention, and macroeconomic levers. Today, my economic personality has evolved toward liberty, spontaneous order, and real-world human decision-making.

To help visualize this journey, I map my current economic worldview across four distinct categories of thought:

1. Foundations of Liberty: The foundational principles of individual freedom, subjective value, and market price signals as essential conduits for human flourishing (Smith, Ricardo, Hayek, Mises, Friedman).

2. Institutional Rules: The formal and informal rules of the game—understanding how transaction costs, governance structures, and public choice incentives shape real-world behavior (Coase, Buchanan, North, Ostrom, McCloskey).

3. Behavioral Realities: Incorporating cognitive psychology and bounded rationality to recognize how real humans actually process choices, risks, and biases (Kahneman, Tversky, Thaler, Simon).

4. Applied Trade-offs: Translating core economic theory into practical policy and daily life—focusing on trade-offs, incentives, and unintended consequences rather than unconstrained intentions (Sowell, Munger, Roberts, Boudreaux).

The accompanying diagram gives you a look at this economics personality flow. How about you? Do you identify with any of these personality traits?