[Introduction to The Capitalist and the Entrepreneur: Essays on Organizations and Markets ] As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be an Austrian economist. Well, not quite, but I was exposed to Austrian economics early on. I grew up in a fairly normal middle-class household, with parents who were New Deal Democrats. In high school, a
“Entrepreneurship, in the Misesian sense, is the act of bearing uncertainty.” Entrepreneurship is one of the fastest growing fields within economics, management, finance, and even law. It’s also becoming a popular subject at colleges and universities. Entrepreneurship courses, programs, and activities are springing up not only in business
The economy is now a networked economy. “Information goods” are becoming more important than traditional goods. Online businesses are a more substantial driving force than brick-and-mortar establishments. Some people even say that in this networked world centralized managerial hierarchies are obsolete; in the future, they will be replaced by
My father was a historian, and he helped organize local events to commemorate the bicentennials of the Declaration of Independence in 1976 and Constitution in 1987. I particularly remember the Freedom Train , a traveling exhibit housing memorabilia such as original copies of the Declaration, the Constitution, the Louisiana Purchase document, and
[ The Capitalist and the Entrepreneur (2010)] While Schumpeter, Kirzner, Cantillon, Knight, and Mises are frequently cited in the contemporary entrepreneurship literature in economics and management, much of this literature takes, implicitly, an occupational or structural approach to entrepreneurship. Any relationship to the classic functional
I met my first Austrians, and first libertarians, at Stanford University in the summer of 1988, at the Mises Institute’s Advanced Instructional Program in Austrian Economics, which evolved into the annual Mises University. There were about 40 students, mostly PhD students in economics, with four instructors: Murray Rothbard, Hans Hoppe, Roger
Studying economics usually makes one enthusiastic about business and skeptical of politics. Cooperation under commercial institutions is voluntary and wealth creating, while cooperation under political institutions is coercive and wealth reducing. Historically, however, the business firm and the state have been closely linked. Businesses, large
[Testimony before US House Committee on Financial Services Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology Subcommittee, May 8, 2012] I specialize in the economic theory of organizations — their nature, emergence, boundaries, internal structure, and governance — a field that is increasingly important in economics and was recognized with the 2009 Nobel
[Peter Klein is teaching Austrian Microeconomics , an online course, from July 5 through August 22.] The Austrian School of economics — the causal-realist, marginalist, subjectivist tradition established by Carl Menger in l871 — has experienced a remarkable renaissance over the last five decades (Vaughn 1994; Rothbard 1995; Oakley 1999; Salerno
In the fall of 1987 I was a senior economics major at the University of North Carolina, looking at options for graduate school. By chance, I found a flyer for a five-year-old organization called the Ludwig von Mises Institute. I was thrilled — I was already an enthusiastic, if unsophisticated, fan of Mises and the Austrian school of economics, and
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.