Two comments regarding issues raised in the "family tree" debate. but first let me say that I have learned a lot by listening in, and am still interested in putting together a web page(s). My comments: 1. "Influence" is extremely hard to track, for all the reasons raised here plus a few more. There was an interesting discussion of the problem of "influence" on H-IDEAS in the spring of 1995 (probably accessible from their filemanager). My contribution to that debate emphasized what I see as my primary task as an intellectual historian: rather than tracking influences, I want to ask what resources were available to a scholar as s/he attempted to communicate with her/his audience. Knowing the Menger and von Mises "influences" on Hayek helps us to interpret what Hayek may have meant when he said what he did, and knowing that he was not aware of some other scholar's work would help us by eliminating other potential meanings. (One of the negative examples would be Knight and Keynes writing on probability theory -- some have asked what Keynes' influence on Knight was, but Knight did not know about Keynes' Treatise on Probability when he was writing Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit, so there is no influence, and we should look elsewhere to find the resources Knight had at his disposal as he tried to apply probability theory to social science). 2. Peter asks about the relevance of discussion of "schools" to the history of economic thought. My answer here is twosided: I think it is relevant to speak of the "Chicago School" but I am personally more interested in the differences among them than in constructing a systematic account of the "Chicago research program." The ties that bind them together are much more tenuous than the debates that separate them (and lead to much of their most interesting work!). One is tempted to say that it is only "location" that binds them together; but in the case of Chicago from the late 20s to the late 70s, the LSE for most of its history, Vienna in the 20s and early 30s, and a few other places, perhaps that is enough. Ross Ross B. Emmett, Augustana University College, Camrose, Alberta CANADA T4V 2R3 voice: (403) 679-1517 fax: (403) 679-1129 e-mail: [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]