Apple underwent a 7-1 stock split last night, such that shares that traded at $645 yesterday opened this morning at $92. Much of the media coverage took a playful tone, e.g., “Don’t freak out. Here’s why Apple’s stock is below $100.” I was particularly intrigued by the brief story on today’s NPR Morning Edition. As the host explained, it’s not
Murray Rothbard was a foremost defender of apriorism in economics and a critic of positivism, empiricism, and scientism ( 1 , 2 , 3 ). But he was not opposed to quantification, particularly in the study of economic history. In fact, he strongly supported the use of statistics in doing applied economics. I was reminded of Rothbard’s view of data
The belief that war, and government spending more generally, fosters economic growth by spurring innovation is one of those fallacies that won’t die, no matter how often it is challenged and refuted. Today’s New York Times gives us the usual spiel: Fundamental innovations such as nuclear power, the computer and the modern aircraft were all pushed
Joe Gillis: You’re Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big. Norma Desmond: I am big. It’s the pictures that got small. — Sunset Boulevard (1950) The University of Chicago’s John List gave the keynote address at this weekend’s Southern Economic Association annual meeting. List is a pioneer in the use by economists of
Dick Langlois on Joel Kayne’s new book, A History of Balance, 1250-1375: The Emergence of a New Model of Equilibrium and Its Impact on Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2014): His argument is that medieval scholastic thought changed radically over this period, and produced by its end a different and arguably more sophisticated model of how the
Volume 2, No. 2 (Summer 1999) In his “closing salvo” in the socialist calculation debate, Mises (1949, pp. 705–10) argued that the market socialists failed to understand the role of financial markets in an industrial economy. Even with markets for consumer goods, he explained, socialism would fail because it substituted collective ownership of the
Volume 4, No. 2 (Summer 2001) Do entrepreneurs make predictable mistakes? Theory and evidence suggest otherwise . Contrary to the conventional wisdom on mergers and sell-offs, divestitures of previously acquired assets do not necessarily indicate that the original acquisitions were mistakes. Indeed, empire-building motives do not seem to
Volume 10, No. 1 (Spring 2007) Tony Yu’s Firms, Strategies, and Economic Change joins a growing list of book-length treatments applying Austrian economics to the theory of the firm, corporate strategy, innovation, new venture formation, and other popular issues in management. Klein, Peter G. “Review of Firms, Strategies, and Economic Change:
Mises Institute Senior Fellow Peter Klein and Associated Scholar Nicolai Foss were interviewed by Á ngel Mart í n Oro for Sintetia.com . Klein and Foss discuss their 2012 book Organizing Entrepreneurial Judgment: A New Approach to the Firm , published by Cambridge University Press. Sintetia: The aim of your book is, as you state, to define a
The University of Angers, France has become an excellent place for doctoral work in Austrian economics, thanks to the leadership of Guido Hülsmann. Several top younger Austrian scholars such as Eduard Braun, Amadeus Gabriel, and Matt McCaffrey — all former Mises Summer Fellows — received their PhDs under Professor Hülsmann’s supervision. Senior
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.