| He entered Bonn University with the intention of studying medicine-his father was a doctor-but switched to economics after attending a lecture by the famous economist of the Austrian school, Joseph Schumpeter, and came under his spell and that of his masterpiece, The Theory of Economic Development (1912). The late Ludwig von Mises, the renowned scholar identified with the Austrian School of economics, often observed that the government is content to blame inflation on business, as has been the case most recently when prices rose in the energy sector. Perhaps this is because Rostow also relied quite heavily on economists not associated with institutional economics, most notably Joseph Schumpeter of the Austrian School and empirically orientated Simon Kuznets (Rostow, 1990). |
