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This paper examines Kirzner's contribution to the study of the equilibrating tendency in economics. By analyzing his interpretation of Jevons' law of indifference, we participate in the debate on Kirzner association with neoclassicals when discussing the equilibrating tendency. A reconstruction of Kirzner's use of Jevons' law is conducted, considering his argumentative strategy when presenting the Austrian economics ideas to other professionals in the field. We conclude that Kirzner drew close to neoclassical economics to emphasize the relevance and uniqueness of Austrian economics. By doing so, we highlight the main differences between the two currents of economic thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comprehensively examines Friedrich von Wieser's thoughts on labour. Although Wieser evolved marginalist theories of value and imputation, he set institutional bounds to them. As his sociological investigations presented perspective that went beyond neo-classicist scopes, Wieser thus provided insightful arguments on capitalistic labour that could be likened to those of Karl Marx. Despite their incompleteness, Wieser's thoughts on labour carried a potential that differed from the subsequent course that the neoclassical school pursued. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conception of the founder of the Austrian School in his book on the philosophy of social sciences has been described by the supporters of this school as a total methodological individualism, upholding the absolute specificity of these sciences to those of nature, and as rejecting the use of mathematics in economics. On the contrary, we shall see that for Carl Menger the human individual was only the fundamental element of socio-economic structures, not reducible to it. Economic theory was to be inspired by the 'atomism' of natural sciences and determine the causes, effects, and laws of the studied phenomena, with the aim of predicting and controlling them. Empirical study had to unite with conceptual abstraction and mathematics in the degree determined by the simplicity or complexity of the field of research. These characteristics of C. Manger's conception, like others, make us assume an important (but unconfessed) influence of A. Comte's positivism. However, in order to prove it, we will try to restore his true philosophy of science, warped by the neo-positivism of the energeticist scientists and of the Vienna Circle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to understand how liberal groups found in the university spaces of Ceará organize and propagate their ideas. The research is of a qualitative nature and uses nonparticipant observation and semistructured interviews. As main results, the research was able to identify 5 liberal groups and found the existence of a key agent responsible for assisting, professionalizing, and propagating liberal ideals in the state of Ceará. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Austrian economic theory approach, which we will summarize, questions the state's ability to improve the results of economic activity. The objective is to present as didactic as possible a modeling that offers great applicability to studies of economic crises resulting from strong state interventions in economic activity. The theory identifies in credit market manipulation the source of the distortions that give rise to the economic cycle. The expansion of bank credit without a prior increase in savings leads to an artificial reduction in interest rates. With the additional volume of lower interest credit, entrepreneurs embark on overly ambitious and unsustainable long-term projects. The result is always a crisis or a reduction in the potential economic growth rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically examines two conceptualisations of ordoliberalism. In one, it is defined, together with neoliberalism, against 19th-century liberalism (in its social liberal and laissez-faire variants). This reading was common among ordoliberals themselves, and early neoliberals such as Friedrich von Hayek, as well as among critics, notably Michel Foucault. In another, ordoliberalism is contrasted to neoliberalism, with the latter presumed to be a species of laissez-faire economics. This reading is commonly accompanied by the supposition that ordoliberalism represents a "Third Way" between capitalism and socialism, or between laissez-faire liberalism and state planning. The main body of this contribution presents a critical analysis of both positions, by way of analysis of ordoliberal texts and a history of the discourse of laissez-faire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the legacy of Austrian economist and economic sociologist Friedrich von Wieser (1851–1926) and shows a number of reasons why Wieser can be seen as an undeservedly underresearched scholar. His life and work are portrayed along five dimensions: the innovative social scientist (section 2); the erector of the Austrian School in its formative decades (section 3); the synthesiser of socio-economic ideas (section 4); the teacher to whom scientific credit has been granted unfairly seldom (section 5); the connector to contemporaneous paradigms of economic sociology, especially the ones of Max Weber and Vilfredo Pareto (section 6). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of the present research is to establish, in general line given by legal science and from the bibliographic review, the means of intervention of the State in the sphere of action and freedom of private initiative in the economic field, notably a so called economic regulatation. When considering the possibility of obtaining answers of the economic science on the subject, one starts for the scientific investigation of the effects of the regulatation in the light of the postulates defined by the Austrian School of Economy, especially, but not exclusively, from studies realized by Ludwig von Mises, gathered and published in the book "Critique of Interventionism". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mises's work of 'Human action' is analyzed in relation to the methodological conceptions of his predecessor C. Menger and of his successor F. von Hayek. Also, it is placed in the continuation of one of his previous works and in contrast to one that followed it. Some of his ideas can be better understood in such a way, while others show themselves as contradictory. It results that his attempt to combine apriorism with scientific realism explains some of major difficulties of Mises's argumentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hermeneutical way of thinking has contributed to producing different ideas in social sciences especially on epistemological base by generating different perspectives. The relation of economics and hermeneutics is considered on this framework. Exclusively, the themes related to historicity and subjectivity on hermeneutical tradition has reflections on German historical school, Austrian economics and Institutional economics in a narrow sense. If hermeneutical point of view as a whole developed into the economics in a wider sense, more anthropological or 'more living economics' would be constructed. Within this context the purpose of the study is to analyze and endorse hermeneutical reflections of economics by asserting hermeneutical conceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This author considers Wang Yanan's contribution to the development of Chinese economic thought during the Republican period. The author analyzes the idea of creating "Chinese economic science," proposed by the scholar in the 1940s, and his assessment of classical political economy and Marxism. The theoretical foundations of Wang's criticism of non-Marxist currents in Chinese economic science in the first half of the 20th century are studied. A connection between Wang's visions and contemporary debates on the prospects for Chinese economic science is revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to rehabilitate the concept of ideology as a necessary tool of struggle against present-day capitalism. Post-structuralist epistemologies, by celebrating pluralism and the emergent character of knowledge and politics, have rendered the intellectual production of a unitary theory an obsolete remnant of a Modernist past. I contend that these well-meaning anti-authoritarian epistemologies unwillingly express the hegemony of a form that the Austrian school proposed for market competition in the first half of the 20th century. Based on ethnographic material of Spain, I acknowledge the need to develop a new conceptual framework that captures the singular experienced realities of the present but links them in a coherent unitary theoretical structure. The productive power of the ‘hegemony of form’ requires the construction of an ideology that may not only destroy it but also provide the basis of a counter-hegemony for producing a better future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to discuss and evaluate the main problems in the research methodology of the Austrian school of economics. This methodology is considerably different from the mainstream approach. Representatives of the Austrian school claim that research methods cannot be transferred from the natural sciences to the economic sciences. They advocate, therefore, the application of praxeology. Research should be done by means of deductive reasoning, beginning with accepted axioms. The Austrians reject the use of mathematical formalism. Instead, they propose that research should be based on realistic assumptions, verbal logic, and cause-and-effect relationships. Furthermore, they reject precise, quantitative prediction in favour of general, qualitative prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a historically contextualised intellectual history of the entangled development of three competing post-war economic approaches, viz the Austrian, Chicago and post-Walrasian schools, as three forms of neoliberalism. Taking our cue from Foucault's reading of neoliberalism as a mode of governmentality under which the social is organised through 'economic incentives', we engage with the recent discussions of neoliberal theory on three accounts: neoliberalism is read as an epistemic horizon including not only 'pro-' but also 'post-market' positions articulated by post-Walrasian economists who claim that market failures necessitate the design of 'incentive-compatible' remedial mechanisms; the Austrian tradition is distinguished from the Chicago-style pro-marketism; and the implications of the differences among the three approaches on economic as well as socio-political life are discussed. The paper maintains that all three approaches promote the de-politicisation of the social through its economisation albeit by way of different theories and policies. © 2013 The Author. Antipode © 2013 Antipode Foundation Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Market equilibrium is an illusion. The economic reality shows us that the main characteristic of the markets is the state of instability. The complexity of the phenomenon and the strong implications engendered by the economic fluctuations in the macro system, justify the rich scientific research activity of the main schools of economic thought to explain it. The Austrian school of economic thought has one of the most realistic analyses of the factors who generate the market instability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work intends to explain the vision of history of the Austrian School. Members of this school of economic thought think that history and economics have in common that they are both sciences of the human action. Their methodologies are not similar, but the essential difference among them is their objects. Whereas Economics studies the means, the object of History is the ends. This article serves also as a revision of the way these economists identify other forms of understanding History and non-natural sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]