The founders of social movements and schools of thought often try to distance themselves from their followers. (Or their later interpreters do this for them). Thus one can ask if Freud was a Freudian, Ricardo a Ricardian, Walras a Walrasian , Keynes a Keynesian (chapter 5 Keynesian? chapter 12 Keynesian?), and so on. What about Marx? Murray
[Cross posted at Organizations and Markets ] Most of my academic colleagues are anti-American food snobs. Why, those poor Yanks, they think Parmesan cheese is a white, powdery stuff in plastic cylinders rather than an expensive, thick, wedge with its maker’s mark on the skin. (Note the section “Other cheeses erroneously named Parmesan” in the
Nicolai Foss notes at Organizations and Markets that James March and Herbert Simon, in their 1958 book Organizations, were among the first social scientists outside the Austrian school to recognize that Mises and Hayek did not lose the socialist calculation
Michael Perelman argues that economics is not an objective science, but an ideology, an apologia for capitalism promoted by the mercantile classes and their intellectual vanguard. Richard Vedder says “[a]s neo-Marxist accounts go, this one is far less polemical and hysterical than some, but it still simply does not accord with critical facts.” Of
Production functions aren’t given. They have to be discovered. This is what entrepreneurship is about; the superiority of Austrian over neoclassical economics lies in seeing this fact. That’s Chris Dillow, commenting on his blog on the Times piece posted earlier by Mark Thornton . Additional commentary here
[Cross-posted at Organizations and Markets ] Over the years I’m increasingly convinced that Israel Kirzner’s metaphor of entrepreneurship as costless discovery — a form of arbitrage, exploiting differences between actual prices and their Walrasian equilibrium values — is a misleading way to think about entrepreneurship. Emphasizing knowledge,
[Cross-posted at Organizations and Markets ] Opera is an innovative company that makes a fine web browser and has a devoted following. I use Opera Mini , which is in many ways superior to the native browser on my BlackBerry. So I was dismayed to learn that Opera has adopted the “if you can’t beat ‘em, file an antitrust suit against ‘em” approach
Milton Friedman’s best-known technical works are his Theory of the Consumption function (1957) and the Monetary History of the United States (with Anna Schwartz, 1963). But it is rarely mentioned that Friedman won the John Bates Clark Award (given by the AEA every two years to the best American economist under 40) in 1951, years before these works
[Cross-posted at Organizations and Markets ] Austrian economists eschew empirical analysis in favor of deductive, a priori reasoning. They don’t believe in prediction . Neoclassical economists, by contrast, endorse the “scientific method” of rigorous empirical testing. You know that, right? Then you might be surprised to learn that Carl Menger
Austrian economists argue that individuals’ preferences are relevant to resource allocation only to the extent that they are demonstrated through action . Economics is, after all, about the process by which subjective preferences are converted into objective, observable market phenomena like prices and quantities (see Joe Salerno’s comment here ).
What is the Mises Institute?
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.