Presented at the Mises Circle in Manhattan, hosted by the Ludwig von Mises Institute and sponsored by the Story Garschina Charitable Fund, and Anonymous Donor. Recorded on Friday, 14 September 2012, at the Metropolitan Club in New York
Following up Joe’s excellent post on price stickiness : Note that the same argument applies to the so-called “real rigidities” — imperfect competition, co-specialized investment, search costs, efficiency wages, and the like — that are central to New Keynesian theories of unemployment. These sorts of institutional arrangements are part of a
Mises’s English-language writings are clear and direct, but he was not a gifted prose stylist like Schumpeter, Hazlitt, or Rothbard (or, for that matter, Keynes, who used sonorous phrasing to conceal murky thinking). Still, some characteristic Misesian expressions — “exploding the fallacy,” for instance — stick in the memory. One of my favorites
Robert Wenzel reviews Ralph Raico’s new book, Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School , a a masterful summary and synthesis of Raico’s lifetime work. The book reflects not only Raico’s erudition and keen intellect, but also his wisdom and dry wit. Notes Wenzel: “in addition to the wit of Raico that keeps you turning the pages for more, I
Did you know this is the semicentennial year not only for Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State, but also for Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions? David Kaiser offers some reflections at Nature. At the heart of Kuhn’s account stood the tricky notion of the paradigm. British philosopher Margaret Masterman famously isolated 21 distinct
The following passage, from Art Diamond’s EH.Net review of Joseph A. Schumpeter: A Theory of Social and Economic Evolution by Esben Sloth Andersen, caught my eye. Since Schumpeter was the premier advocate of economic dynamism, I have long wondered if his praise for Walras was sincere or ironic. Andersen painstakingly shows that Schumpeter believed
Robert Wenzel offers a spirited defense of Israel Kirzner’s concept of entrepreneurial alertness in a response to Danny Sanchez. I admire Wenzel’s enthusiasm and his appreciation for Mises, but I think his defense misses the mark. Indeed, there is a growing awareness among scholars working in the Austrian tradition that the essence of
Bob Wenzel has written several additional posts on our disagreement regarding entrepreneurship ( here , here , and here ). I’ve greatly enjoyed the discussion, and I thank Bob for the space he’s devoted to this topic. I hate to sound like a cranky old professor, but I’ve explained my position about as clearly as I can in two books and a series of
Paul Krugman isn’t the only Princeton economist producing sloppy and ill-informed newspaper columns. Alan Blinder weighs in with a September 6 Wall Street Journal column on the “stark” [sic] differences between the economic programs of Obama and Romney-Ryan. Blinder starts out well enough: The Rooseveltian consensus embodied three main elements: a
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.