Books, Arts & Manners: Schumpeter without Tears

Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Practice and Principles, by Peter F. Drucker (Harper & Row, 277 pp., $19.95)

Politicians, as Keynes pointed out in his famous coda to The General Theory, really do listen to economists; what they do after that is another story. When Nikolai Kondratieff developed an econometric model that correctly predicted the disastrous effect of collective farms on Soviet agriculture, Stalin listened closely—and then had Kondratieff shot.

About the Author

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout is the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. Satchmo at the Waldorf, his 2011 play about Louis Armstrong, has been produced off Broadway and throughout America.

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Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Practice and Principles, by Peter F. Drucker (Harper & Row, 277 pp., $19.95)

Politicians, as Keynes pointed out in his famous coda to The General Theory, really do listen to economists; what they do after that is another story. When Nikolai Kondratieff developed an econometric model that correctly predicted the disastrous effect of collective farms on Soviet agriculture, Stalin listened closely—and then had Kondratieff shot.

About the Author

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout is the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. Satchmo at the Waldorf, his 2011 play about Louis Armstrong, has been produced off Broadway and throughout America.