Why Does Economics Matter?

Tags: Austrian Economics Overview

11/20/2010 Mark Thornton

Austrian economists differ from mainstream economists mainly in this way: they do not rely on mathematical models, but on understanding what causes success or failure in the real world. Opportunity costs determine the choices people make.

Recorded at the Mises Institute on Friday, 19 November 2010. Sponsored by Anastasia Thiele.

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.