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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]

Current technological advances have revived the old socialist calculation debate. While the arguments on the socialist side appear to be backed by exciting technological developments, the pro‐market camp still mainly relies on the classical thinking of the Austrian school. A reasonable way to reinvigorate the free‐market thesis is to look at the ends of economic calculations, intentionally overlooked during the classical period of the debate. A valuable supplement to the contemporary pro‐market position could be found in the ordoliberal vision that emphasised the interdependence of various spheres and the power problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intelligence scholars are drawing on behavioural decision theory to improve decision-making under risk and uncertainty in intelligence and counterintelligence. Such an undertaking is essentially lacking without the Austrian school's concepts of knowledge, discovery, (entrepreneurial) judgement, ignorance, rational calculation and, more generally, its analysis of human action in the face of true uncertainty. Decision theory, both orthodox and behavioural, depicts decision rather narrowly as a prioritisation task undertaken within a delineated problem space where the probabilities "sum to one". From such a perspective, certain perennial challenges in intelligence and counterintelligence appear resolvable when in fact they are not, at least not when approached from the usual direction. We explain how Austrian concepts can complement efforts to improve intelligence decision-making. We conclude that the future strategic value of intelligence analysis is located beyond information acquisition, however fast and however vast. Intelligence agencies have no price signals to help them determine how much intelligence to produce. And governments have no price signals to moderate their appetites for the intelligence product. Ultimately, those agencies that recognise the implications of intelligence agencies as non-price institutions and adapt their decision-making processes may find that they have the upper hand over their rivals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term neoliberalism is a faithful companion of current public debates. It often serves as a proxy for what is allegedly wrong with society. The term is used to criticize a perceived commodification of spheres of human existence that used to be shielded from a purely economic logic. Recently, the term neoliberalism has become the object of historical research. Its roots have been traced back as far as 1947 or 1918. I argue in this paper that historians have taken a methodologically questionable approach, by departing from the blurry concept of neoliberalism as it is perceived today and trying to trace it back in time as far as possible. Such an approach leads to severe contradictions as economists labelled ex-post as neoliberals were often opposed to neoliberalism as it is currently defined. It is methodologically more sound and analytically more rewarding to start the conception of the term with the economists who self-identified as neoliberals. This approach leads to a more coherent concept of neoliberalism that is better suited for further research and provides a clearer understanding of the history of economic thought in the interwar period and the first postwar years.

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Copyright of Lecturas de Economia is the property of Universidad de Antioquia, Facultad de Ciencias Economicas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Carl Menger's Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre was published 150 years ago, in 1871, marking the beginning of the Austrian School. Menger's contribution was not only part of the beginning of the "marginalist" turn in economics, but to the unique "subjectivist," market process-oriented aspects of the "Austrian" tradition, that also includes a focus on unintended institutional evolution. Menger was concerned with developing what he called the "exact laws" of economics that were most general and universal in their quality and presence. But, contrary to some of his Historical School critics, Menger also emphasized the "empirical-realistic," or historical and institutional, contexts within which the laws of economics play themselves out. Menger, as well, highlighted the importance of value-freedom in theoretical and applied economic analysis. But in spite of this, Menger believed that human nature and historical experience suggested a wide variety of economic policy purposes and the means to them. This comes out most clearly in the lectures on political economy that he delivered to Austrian Crown Prince Rudolf in 1876, and in an "anonymous" monograph on the Austrian aristocracy that Menger co-authored with Prince Rudolf in 1878. Menger's lectures show him to be a strong advocate of economic individualism and fairly unregulated free markets, with warnings against the dangers from political "paternalism." But Menger was not an extreme advocate of laissez-faire, and his proposals for fiscal and bureaucratic management of the Austrian state were, surprisingly, rather "un-Austrian." Yet, his contributions still resonate with great significance a century and a half after the appearance of the Grundsätze. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ludwig von Mises, a prominent representative of the Austrian school, was also a radical critic of authoritarianism and totalitarianism. His criticism was deeply rooted in economic theory, particularly in his authoritative comparative analysis of socialism and capitalism and his original theory of bureaucracy. At the same time, while emphasizing the economic aspects, he ignored the distinction between the two systems, treating any major appropriation of economic power by the state as a fast track to full political and economic control. Reconstructing Mises reasoning, the article discusses in turn the fundamental issues related to the analysis of the socialist order and its relation to authoritarian orders, supplemented by considerations of bureaucracy and war, as well as questions of the importance of democracy and the right to self-determination for the well-being of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a critical reading of Janek Wasserman's The Marginal Revolutionaries: How Austrian Economists Fought the War of Ideas. Wasserman depicts the evolution of the Austrian School from the 1860s until today, a particularly illuminating narrative for the readers of this journal. The breadth of portrayed economists, their cultural embeddedness in Austrian and US contexts, and the complexity of configurations across the school's generations create a rich and readable story. The last third of the book suffers from allegations about the ideological agenda and institutional power of the Austrian economists which sometimes lack sufficient substantiation. The paper indicates how both in their theorizing and in their political activities, the Austrian economists can be seen as reformers instead of revolutionaries, and as constitutionalists instead of anti-democrats. Despite these disagreements, Wasserman's portrayals evoke largely fair and challenging impulses both to scholars working in the Austrian research program and to those interested in the Austrian School's long history, regardless of one's ideological positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout his career, Ludwig M. Lachmann theorized about how economies and societies achieve order in an uncertain world full of heterogeneous agents, heterogeneous production factors, and multilayered subjectivity. This article traces how he began his research agenda by expanding the conventional equilibrium framework of the 1930s to include (potentially diverging) expectations but gradually abandoned price coordination as the sole source of order in an economy. Instead, he set out to formulate an institutional theory of socially embedded plan coordination, which transcended the traditional division between commerce and community. This article illustrates this shift in Lachmann's focus by using two of his neglected German publications. Additionally, it lays out how Lachmann's effort in the "thinking in orders" tradition was principally rooted in his dissatisfaction with approaches to economics that reduced it to a "pure logic of choice." Lachmann instead conceived of his discipline as being something closer to Max Weber's "socioeconomics," and in this he was strongly influenced by the German historical school. This article explains how, ironically, this tradition, which historically positioned itself in stark opposition to the Austrian school, has—through the mediation of Lachmann—had considerable influence on the recent history of the Austrian school in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mises's very first expression of a liberal outlook is usually associated with the 1919 Nation, Economy, and State because very little is known about his earlier work. Several recent studies, however, suggest that the Viennese social space and the Habsburg's socioeconomic reality influenced Mises's liberalism during his studies at the University of Vienna. This paper shows that Mises's liberal outlook traces back to his early work, influenced by Younger Historicist members of the Verein für Sozialpolitik, such as Knapp and Grünberg. We argue that Mises's early work expressed a rationalist liberal outlook that intertwined with the social policy reform aspirations of the Verein für Sozialpolitik. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents, for the first time in English translation, five writings of Carl Menger that appeared in Austrian newspapers: Crown-Prince Rudolf (1889); Survey on the Catholic University (1901); An Interview with Carl Menger (1903); The Conquest of the Universities (1907); The University Issue (1908). The introduction outlines a historical contextualization of the pieces. These writings provide some vital information concerning Menger's ideas on education, university, and free scientific research. The first piece is an obituary of Crown-Prince Rudolf, and offers a rich description of Rudolf's educational path and Menger's attitude as a teacher. The other four pieces focus more on Menger's academic activity and his assessment of the Austrian cultural struggle between Catholicism and free research. It appears that, in Menger's view, the spirit of free inquiry and science is fundamentally incompatible with any religious worldview, whenever the latter affects the method of the researcher, and the results of her/his work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of rational behavior has a significant role in economics and its analysis of market economy and general equilibrium. On the other hand, there exists a logical relation between limits of rationality and learning from error. With explaining the concept of rational behavior in the neoclassical economics and its relation with the rational expectation hypothesis this article addresses the following two questions: First, has the idea of learning from error played a role in the formation of neoclassical concept of rational behavior? If not, secondly, can the idea play a role in improving the meaning of rational behavior in economics? In response to these question, the article reviews the following discussions: (a) the neoclassical concept of rational behaviors is reviewed and the critiques of behavioral economics and the theories of choice under uncertainty are discussed, (b) the rational usage of information and its relation with the meaning of rational behavior are examined, and in this context the importance of the idea of learning from error is explored, and (c) Karl Popper’s theory of rationality as openness to criticism and its consequence for the idea of learning from error in terms of conjecture and refutation will be discussed. The article finally uses the Austrian economists’, i.e. Hayek and Krizner, critiques regarding the neoclassical concept of rational behavior in order to show that Popper’s theory of rationality can improve the concept of rational behavior in economics.

Copyright of Procesos de Mercado is the property of Procesos de Mercado. Revista Europea de Economia Politica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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]

Copyright of Revista de Ciencias Sociales (13159518) is the property of Revista de Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad del Zulia Venezuela and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Tiempo y Economía is the property of La Fundacion Universidad de Bogota Jorge Tadeo Lozano and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Through this article we will try to get into the way of thinking of one of the most important economic schools, namely the Austrian School. Over time, many mistakes have been made by various economic schools because the fundamentals of thinking were not clear or the concepts used were not properly defined. Here we will try to clarify the foundation in general of the socio-human sciences and in particular of the mentioned school. Building theories or opinions on a fragile foundation will certainly give rise to a friable architecture. Among the various philosophers who have approached science, we believe that von Wight has a direct and clear approach to the type of human social thinking. From the information we have we do not know an approach similar to this article. The Austrian School has hitherto been understood as a methodology from the perspective of Aristotelianism. The question is whether a new perspective can make more sense. The methodology of presenting the article is narrative argumentation. The questions we try to answer in the conclusions are those related to understanding the present moment and discerning the future moment through the fog. The conclusions will be critical regarding the use of mathematics in the socio-human sciences, and the socio-human sciences must be understood only from the perspective of human motivations and intentions. Clarifying the starting point in economic thinking makes us more modest in drawing conclusions and making predictions about the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since most economic theories that discuss individual choices treat individuals as acting for reason, and thus in some way rationally, questions about the role that rationality plays in economics are of great importance. Rationality is often expressed by "Homo Economicus" through utility theory versus its identification through social terms by "Homo Sociologicus". In this framework, business cycle theory is often rooted in assumptions regarding individual or collective rationality. Thus, the study of business cycles in combination with the concept of rationality may shed light on methodological issues. This paper focuses on the Austrian tradition because of its distinct characteristics: (a) the view that economics is part of the broader concept of political economy; (b) its antithesis to mathematical formalism, (c) its antithesis between ideal types and reality, (d) the struggle between groups for the distribution of wealth; and (v) methodological reductionism. Hence, investigating the methodological origins of these ideas in economics and re-evaluating the influences that shaped them is quite useful for promoting dialogue in the methodology of economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Walter Lippmann is widely acknowledged as the Father of modern American Journalism and one of the most profound public thinkers of the twentieth century. Though he extensively corresponded with economists, political philosophers, political scientists, and statesmen on both sides of the Atlantic, Lippmann's interest in political economy has only come under serious academic investigation within the last 20 years. When Lippmann has been explored in the history of economic thought, he has generally been considered to be a propagator and popularizer of others' ideas rather than a serious theorist in his own right, particularly his role in spreading Keynesianism as one of the early supporters of the New Deal. This chapter directly challenges this dominant interpretation on two fronts. First, it acknowledges and explores Lippmann's role as a contributor to the economic discourse of his time. Second, it challenges categorizing Lippmann as a Keynesian by highlighting the closeness of many of his ideas to the Austrian school of thought. It accomplishes this by giving a holistic view of Lippmann's thought, not only in the Great Depression and New Deal Era, but how he evolved from a student sympathetic to socialism at Harvard in 1910 to a theorist concerned with epistemological problems of good political, social, and economic order. The development of Lippmann's thought in this broader lens parallels much of the work of Hayek, Mises, and others during this period, and presents rich new research opportunities for both modern Austrian economists as well as historians of economic thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carl Menger's Principles of Economics is one of the pillars of modern economics. It was neither ignored nor disregarded at the time of its publication, as some narratives suggest. Commentaries in journals and newspapers show a broad and auspicious reception, in no way an indifferent one. This new review of the reception examines the first fissures this book caused in classical political economy and the methodology of the social sciences. Menger's book was later recognized as one of the cornerstones of the marginal revolution and the turn to subjective value theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Procesos de Mercado is the property of Procesos de Mercado. Revista Europea de Economia Politica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstarct: In this short contribution, I summarize the four papers that comprise the symposium on Microfoundations and Macroeconomics: An Austrian Perspective and then address several themes that they raise. Specifically, I discuss the roles of capital and capital goods, human capital, adjustment costs after monetary shocks, W. H. Hutt's understanding of idleness in the labor market, and the ways in which Austrian macroeconomic concepts can be deployed in doing economic history. I argue that intertemporal discoordination remains the key concept in Austrian macroeconomics and encourage present and future scholars to explore the coordinating role of capital and to challenge the institutional and historical contingencies that have defined the canonical Austrian business cycle theory story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the presence of Israel Kirzner in the History of Economic Thought and focusing on his professional engagement with other economists. His academic trajectory is contextualized on three milestones of the recent history of the Austrian School. The first one is the ending of the socialist economic calculation debate, when the Austrian was considered unconvincing due to the economics' shift to a general equilibrium model of the economy; in the aftermath of the debate, Kirzner entered at the New York University's PhD program and was mentored by Ludwig von Mises. At this point, Kirzner started to develop his ideas on entrepreneurship and to aim an audience wider than his Austrian peers. The second is the Austrian Revival in the 1970s, in which the prestigious recovery stage of the Austrian School, thanks to Kirzner assuming a leadership role in the process. The third is in the 1980s, when a more consolidated Austrian School attempts to define itself, as Kirzner retains an Austrian vision founded on the synthesis between Mises and Hayek. It is concluded that Kirzner's professional engagement was fundamental in the recovery of Austrian theory. He communicated Austrian ideas to a wider audience and synthetized Misesian and Hayekian proposals on the market process. These efforts allow us to recognize a Kirznerian view of the Austrian School, established with the traditional microeconomic theory, but including greater subjectivity on the interpretation of economic phenomena, becoming a more general, more realistic theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the distinctive features of the Austrian School of Economics has been its emphasis on the entrepreneur as central to the market process. One 20th century Austrian whose work is normally not thought of as making a major contribution to the Austrian theory of entrepreneurship is Ludwig Lachmann. However, a careful reading of his 1956 book Capital and its Structure can tease out a theory of the function of the entrepreneur that is distinctly different from that of Israel Kirzner, yet still clearly situated in an Austrian conception of the market process. In this contribution, I want to emphasize two points that have been raised by previous work on Lachmann, but not explored in any detail. The first is that Lachmann’s conception of entrepreneurship is deeply bound up with the need to engage in monetary calculation thanks to the heterogeneity of capital and uncertainty of the future. For Lachmann, the key function of the entrepreneur is to “specify” the uses of capital goods. Such specification requires the use of money prices and what Mises called monetary calculation. The second contribution is to offer more detail on the way in which entrepreneurs both creatively specify and re-specify the uses of their capital goods in response to profit and loss signals. The constant shuffling and reshuffling of capital goods, of which coming up with new products or new twists to old ones are a part, is the essence of Lachmann’s implicit vision of entrepreneurship. For Lachmann, entrepreneurship is bound up with resource ownership and deployment through the creation and revision of plans in ways that are much more active than Kirzner’s conception of the entrepreneur.

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.