Professor Axel Leijonhufvud passed away few months ago, at the age of 89. Despite the fact that the contribution he made to economics has been widely recognized, his approach remains 'problematic' because of his dialogue and proximity with different streams of thought, and in particular with the...

What is the appropriate role of the state in economic policy-making? This paper shows that Friedrich Hayek, who is often considered a proponent of laissez-faire liberalism, offers three different answers to this problem. First, Hayek argues that the state should provide a legal framework for...

According to economists of the Austrian school, even with everyone’s best efforts, a system based on social ownership of the means of production could not effectively deploy a decentralized price system. The case is made primarily by Mises and Hayek in the 1920s and 1930s with a further...

Carl Menger advanced a narrow definition of exact or theoretical economics. Theoretical economics is the study of the self-interested aspect of human efforts made to meet needs. One implication of this definition, Menger argues, is a strict demarcation between ethics and economics. Menger...

This paper uses the Austrian theory of money, as developed mainly by Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard to identify the separate economic processes commonly designated as “deflationary” and to determine whether they can be classified as “benign” or “malignant.”

Both Friedrich Hayek and Carl Schmitt are critical of the role of economic interest groups in modern democracies. This paper begins by comparing their descriptions of how such groups attempt to obtain favorable treatment from the state (“rent seeking”). The paper then discusses the proposed...

This paper contextualizes the early political economy of Austrian economist and social philosopher F. A. Hayek in the intellectual milieu of German ordoliberalism. It argues that the particular urgency during the 1930s and 1940s to preserve and stabilize the disintegrating orders of economy and...

Economists are divided about population growth: the pessimism of neo-Malthusians contrasts strongly with the optimism of cornucopians. Despite their differences, both schools of thought reject economic orthodoxy and prefer evolutionary forms of theory. Their interpretations of evolution are...

Hayek thought that the origins of composite social structures, including the economy is among the great unanswered questions of social science. These structures are the result of the beliefs and actions of the multitude and do not follow a single purposeful design. Their non-designed structures,...

A good friend of mine, Brent Gilliland wrote an article entitled 'In Defense of Misesian Historical Revisionism' and in this article, I attempt to draw a re-formulation of the argument that Gilliland makes and develop it from a Hayekian point of view. I attempt to show that, in general...

The Austrian school economics and neo-Marxist theories both have been reviving in recent years. However, the current academic discussion lacks a debate between two schools of economics with diametrically opposed views. This paper is the first and an initial Austrian challenge to Neo-Marxist...

Carl Menger’s Principles of Economics, published in 1871, is usually regarded as the founding document of the Austrian School of economics. Many of the School’s prominent representatives, including Friedrich Wieser, Eugen Böhm-Bawerk, Ludwig Mises, Hans Mayer, Friedrich August Hayek, Fritz...

Friedrich Hayek was a fervent advocate of the methodological specificity of the social sciences. However, given his contact with Karl Popper, several historians and philosophers have characterised his final position as Popperian, that is, a position that would have accepted the unity of the...

Austrian economist Ludwig Mises’s central role in the socialist calculation debates has been consensually acknowledged since the early 1920s. Yet, only recently, Nemeth, O’Neill, Uebel, and others have drawn particular attention to Mises’s pertinent encounter with one of the most colorful...

In recent academic and to some extent public debates, mainstream economics has been accused of excessive mathematization. The rejection of mathematical and other formal methods is often cited as a crucial trait of Austrian economics. Based on a systematic discussion of potential benefits and...

F.A Hayek is one of the most important and influential advocates of liberalism in the 20th century. His theory is famously based on the concept of spontaneous order, an order emerging from the interaction of individuals without central control and appears critical of every form of...

This working paper - like its companion, Caldwell and Klausinger 2021 - grew out of the authors' joint work on Hayek: A Life, 1899-1950 (Caldwell and Klausinger 2022) and it contains material supplementing it. This paper draws to a large extent on Friedrich Hayek's own investigations into the...

This working paper - like its companion, Caldwell and Klausinger 2021 - grew out of the authors' joint work on Hayek: A Life 1899-1950 (Caldwell and Klausinger 2022) and it contains material supplementing it. This paper examines the intellectual circles of fin-desiécle Vienna in which the Hayek...

In this essay I selectively survey the economic history literature on the rise of regulation in America during the Progressive Era with the goal of identifying how this literature is informed by Austrian economic theory, and how Austrian theory might contribute to our understanding of the...

Despite numerous calls for integrating entrepreneurship research and firm theory, there has been relatively little work done in this direction. Likewise, despite many discussions, controversy continues to surround core theoretical frame-works in strategic management such as the resource-based...

According to Austrian macroeconomic theory, capital accumulation today generates supply tomorrow. Will that supply match tomorrows demand? In this paper we study this question in a multi-good and risky environment with an efficient financial system. Towards this end we develop a model based on...

For more than two centuries, liberal constitutionalists have championed the separation of powers as a means of constraining self-interested political activity that erodes personal freedom. Although F. A. Hayek values the separation of powers, he contends that it cannot safeguard individual...

The year 2021 marks the 150th anniversary of Carl Menger’s Principles of Economics, the Austrian School of Economics’ foundational work. This paper looks at the most relevant work this school of thought has produced during the last century and a half. The Austrian School has worked on...

This is the introduction a Symposium on Carl Menger on the Centenary of his Death. Our introduction includes a short biographical sketch of Carl Menger's life as well as a summary of the contribtuions to the symposium by Sandra J. Peart, Günther Chaloupek, Erwin Dekker, and Sandye Gloria

A superb introduction to Austrian economicsThe Austrian School is a concise but comprehensive exposition of the main tenets of the modern Austrian School of Economics. It also provides a detailed explanation of the differences between the Austrian and the neoclassical (including the Chicago...

A new theory on the characteristics of entrepreneurial knowledgeThis important book published by the Institute of Economic Affairs in association with Edward Elgar presents, in a new context, important aspects of Austrian economic ideas. The book explores the recent shift among professional...

A Methodenstreit is a debate in economics concerning the philosophy of social science. It involves the issue of which is the property method to pursue in the dismal science. Although this type of debate had its origins two centuries ago, the present paper is a contribution to a more modern...

This paper reviews the Austrian theory of the business cycle first proposed by Friedrich Hayek in the 1920s. His theory claimed that credit creation by monetary authorities would push investment beyond society`s long-term willingness to save, creating a mismatch between supply and demand that...

In trying to construct a more humanistic economic science in which women’s contribution is duly acknowledged, feminist economics proposes quantitative methods to compute non-market activities in traditional or novel economic indicators. Additionally, feminist economists seek to refocus...

Could Ludwig von Mises be considered a feminist economist? This paper tries to answer this question, providing many cites and arguments developed by the Austrian economist. As is pointed, Mises was aware of women’s struggle. He was a great promoter of women’s development and freedom, as he...

What is the role of the entrepreneur in Carl Menger’s account of the market process? Modern entrepreneurship theory is broadly divided into two types. The Schumpeterian account of entrepreneurship takes an equilibrium state of affairs as an analytic starting point from which the entrepreneur...

In studying the development of western freedoms, perhaps no subject is more worthy of discussion than classical liberalism, which the late historian Ralph Raico wrote was “the signature political philosophy of Western Civilization.” Raico defined classical liberalism as “the ideology...

The Austrian school of economics has played a key contribution toward an improved understanding of the characteristics of economic innovation. Over recent decades the language and concepts of innovation theory has broadened to non-market settings, among other things giving rise to a voluminous...

This paper examines the effects of a proportional capital gains tax in an economy with an Austrian sector (with wine and trees) and an ordinary sector. We analyze the effect of capital gains taxation (on both an accrual and a realization basis) on the efficiency with which resources are used...

What is the relationship between central planning, pervasive shortages, and soft budget constraints under socialism? In this paper, we address this question by exploring the evolution of János Kornai’s work on the operation of real-world socialism. In doing so, our goal is to reframe...