Ronald Coase has a short piece in the December 2012 Harvard Business Review, “Saving Economics from the Economists” (thanks to Geoff Manne for the tip). Not bad for a fellow about to turn 102! I always learn from Coase, even when I don’t fully agree. Here Coase decries the irrelevance of contemporary economic theory, condemning economics for
Hayek defined “scientism” or the “scientistic prejudice” as”slavish imitation of the method and language of Science” when applied to the social sciences, history, management, etc. Scientism represents “a mechanical and uncritical application of habits of thought to fields different from those in which they have been formed, and as such is “not an
Robert Bork, who died yesterday, is remembered largely as a Constitutional scholar, but his most important contributions dealt with antitrust. He was sharply critical of the modern application of US antitrust law, while remaining wedded to the Knight-Friedman-Stigler idea of perfect competition as a welfare benchmark, leading to a number of
Warmest holiday wishes, and a hearty thank you, to our bloggers, commenters, and readers for making this a great year for the Circle Bastiat! Enjoy the holiday season, and look forward to more timely, provocative, and informative commentary in the new
Austrian business cycle theory explains the general pattern of the boom-bust cycle — credit expansion, lowered interest rates, malinvestment, crash, liquidation — but the particulars differ in each historical case. (Austrians sometimes distinguish “typical” from “unique” features of each cycle.) To explain particular episodes, we appeal to
Sandy Ikeda offers a nice summary of Elinor Ostrom’s views in a recent Freeman column. As Sandy notes, Ostrom is famous for documenting, through carefully done case studies, how individuals work together to solve various kinds of externality problems without recourse to formal (state) institutions. However, Sandy follows Ostrom’s somewhat
“Liberalism knows no conquests, no annexations; just as it is indifferent towards the state itself, so the problem of the size of the state is unimportant to it. It forces no one against his will into the structure of the state.” —Ludwig von Mises, Nation, State, and Economy: Contributions to the Politics and History of Our
An amusing thing about Friedmanite positivism is its remarkable naïveté about how empirical social science research is actually done. Quantitative empirical analysis in practice is nothing at all like the model described in Friedman (1953). Results are rarely conclusive. Disagreement (and fighting ) is widespread. Some theories are so widely
As evidence of the growing interest in Austrian economics within management studies, note these sessions or papers at upcoming meetings of the major academic management societies, the Academy of Management (Boston, August 3-7) and the Strategic Management Society (Prague, October 6-9): Austrian Economics & Creative Destruction Facilitator: Peter
To honor Julia Child on her 100th birthday, Lynne Kiesling writes a nice post combining three of my favorite things: cooking, entrepreneurship theory, and Austrian economics. Good cooking is about the combination of heterogeneous resources, it requires experimentation and creativity, and it either works or it doesn’t. Most important: A system that
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.