Understanding Financial Instability: Minsky Versus the Austrians

In the wake of the Financial Crisis and the subsequent Great Recession several commentators have suggested that the analysis of financial instability provided by various strands of heterodox economics got it "right" and that mainstream economics got it "wrong". In this paper two variants of heterodox views about financial instability are compared critically: the views of the late Hyman P. Minsky on the one hand, and the theses of the Austrian School on the other. It is concluded that the apparent similarities between both approaches are superficial, while the divergences are profound and fundamental.