Search

While Buchanan is best known for the economics of politics and constitutions, his seminal contributions to this field are but one branch of his more underlying methodology and approach to doing social science. Buchanan’s fundamental project was to re-orient economics and social science toward an analysis of symbiotic exchange (catallactics) rather than of antiseptic allocation (optimization). The most definite statement of this contribution lies in Buchanan’s 1963 presidential address to the Southern Economic Association, “What should economists do?” which was later expanded into a book of the same title. This paper seeks to draw attention to several of Buchanan’s more recent but lesser known articles where he fully develops this theme. He calls on economists to rediscover Adam Smith’s “elementary notion” about the division of labor and the extent of the market, and he professes the notion of “generalized increasing returns” as a mechanism for economists to rediscover their Scottish Enlightenment roots within the neoclassical framework. In this same vein, we also discuss how Buchanan’s rediscovery might apply to two prominent and ongoing twenty-first century issues, trade restrictions and populism.

This paper summarizes Horwitz’s contributions in Microfoundations and Macroeconomics: An Austrian Perspective and evaluates its connection with recent contributions in Austrian macroeconomics. The paper emphasizes the connection between relative price, monetary equilibrium, and monetary policy. The paper pays particular attention to the implications of Horwitz’s denomination of capital theory as a “missing link” in economic theory.

This paper provides new estimates of the effects of left-of-center populist regimes on economic developments in the 21st century in Latin America. In contrast to earlier research, we take account of the price shocks that may also have affected economic development during these regimes’ time in office. In general, we find that left-populist regimes reduced per capita real income in both the short and long run, after accounting for those price shocks.

This paper defends the relevance of Austrian Business Cycle theory (ABCT) within a fiat money regime, by providing an answer to whether a constant rate of credit expansion necessarily leads to a boom-bust cycle. We claim that this scenario has two potential outcomes, (1) a change in money demand brings the economy back towards equilibrium or (2) the economy will shift to a sub-optimal but still sustainable path. We identify capital heterogeneity effects and the Ricardo effect as distinctly Austrian explanations for an upper turning point, even in a fiat money regime.

We study a case that applies hermeneutics to social sciences, in particular to the Austrian school of economics. We argue that an inaccurate treatment of hermeneutics contributed to an epistemological downgrade of the Austrian school in the economic scientific community. We discuss how this shortcoming can be fixed and how a proper hermeneutic application to the Austrian school explains why this school of thought is neither positivist nor postmodern.

In a recent contribution to this journal Saverio Fratini (Review of Austrian Economics, 2019) offers a critique of our work on Austrian Capital Theory on the grounds that our conception of capital and “roundaboutness” does not appear to provide adequate support for the Austrian business-cycle theory. In this comment we explain why we think this criticism is wrong.

This paper applies Kirzner’s theory of entrepreneurial alertness to central banking. As opposed to entrepreneurs operating within the market, central banks can operate outside the market by defining its structure and regulations. We label as “super-alertness” the particular type of Kirznerian alertness that central banks are required to have to successfully achieve stable monetary equilibrium.

Concerns about the institutional impact of immigration, particularly in the United States, are not new. We can trace them back to Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton. More recently, in response to a literature that questions the desirability of current immigration restrictions, Borjas (J Econ Lit 53:961–974, 2015) speculates that immigrants coming from countries with poor institutions could reduce substantially the institutional quality in the United States to a point where it could negate all economic gains associated with immigration in terms of GDP and income. Using the Economic Freedom of North America index since 1980, we find no evidence to corroborate Borjas’s concerns. However, we find mixed evidence that immigration increases minimum wages and union density.

The time is right for a reexamination of Austrian capital-theory. We attempt to capture the essence of Carl Menger’s approach to capital, highlighting the important distinction between goods and the valuable services they yield (implying that goods are valuable only because they yield valuable services) and highlighting also the importance of money in facilitating exchange and production and in providing the means to value them. We look at the capital-theory of Bohm-Bawerk and suggest that, in many respects, this was a wrong turn, although it did set in motion valuable efforts to clarify the importance of the heterogeneity of productive-resources and their growing complexity over time. We examine the production-function, micro and macro, and show that it is logically untenable and useless as an instrument for empirical investigation, and that this has been known for decades. Of the Austrians after Menger, only Mises followed Irving Fisher in focusing on valuation. He did so in the context of explaining the importance of calculation. Mises’s approach to capital has been insufficiently understood and appreciated. By way of conclusion we draw from our considerations to provide a research agenda in Austrian capital theory.

We review the post-crisis literature that engages Austrian business cycle theory and we discuss what is being said that is correct, what is being said that is incorrect, and what is not being said that ought to be said. This last category is important due to the fact that the post-crisis literature engaging Austrian business cycle theory has not addressed advances in the theory made since the days of Mises and Hayek. We also highlight three key areas of contemporary economics where Austrian business cycle theory has the potential to do significant work.

One of the most important objections to the Mises-Hayek business cycle theory is the rational expectations critique. The debate between supporters and critics of the Mises-Hayek theory has not paid sufficient attention to the problem of differences in expectations and the market share in the allocation of production factors. I represent financially the effects that occur under the Austrian business cycle theory in the market of production factors as well as how economic imbalances occur when a central bank follows an expansionary policy and entrepreneurs have different expectations.

This paper extends the Mises-Hayek business cycle theory to open economies with fiat currencies. I explore: (1) the problem of domestic versus international monetary policy with fiat currencies in an international setting. (2) How the feedback effects between central banks in the context of an expansionary monetary contributes to extend and transmit a Mises-Hayek business cycle from big economies to small financially integrated economies. I find that a lengthening of the period of production is not the only effect produced on the capital structure, but also a misallocation of capital goods between the production of tradable and non-tradable goods and services and that business cycles can become more severe when there are open economies with fiat currencies.

In Time Deposits, Dimension, and Fraud (2009), William Barnett and Walter Block argue that by borrowing short and lending long there is an over issuance of property rights. Their article, however, does not fully extend the consequences of their contribution. Once this is done, it becomes clearer that their argument suits a great impediment to banking, becoming a possible reason to support rather than to oppose fractional reserve banking. Bagus and Howden (J Bus Ethics 90(3):399–406, 2009) comment on Barnett and Block (J Bus Ethics 88(4):711–716, 2009), the authors claim that while maintaining the illegitimacy of fractional reserve deposits, borrowing short and lending long it is actually not illegitimate. An extension on Bagus and Howden (2009) will show that their line of argumentation can be applied as a defense of fractional reserve banking as well.