Editorial: The Austrian Economics Newsletter

About the AEN

The Austrian Economics Newsletter is the quarterly interview journal published by the Mises Institute. Each issue spotlights the writings and research of a scholar or financial journalist who works within the tradition of the Austrian School.

The AEN began publishing in the Fall of 1977, under the auspices of the Center for Libertarian Studies, which was then located in New York, New York. The writers and editors were part of small but growing contingent of graduate students in economics who had been influenced by Mises's New York seminar and the writings and personal example of Mises's students Murray N. Rothbard and Israel M. Kirzner, as well as Ludwig Lachmann.

Their goal was to reinvigorate Austrian theory in a new generation as a means of combating mainstream trends in economic thought. But for the Nobel Prize given to F.A. Hayek in 1974, academia considered Austrian economics to be a closed chapter in the history of thought, supplanted by Keynesianism and the neoclassical synthesis.

The purpose of the AEN was to provide a forum for Austrian students and serve as a communication tool for the new movement. Among its most effective offerings was the interview, which provided students an inside look into the thinking, drawn out in an informal setting, of the best Austrian theorists.

The Mises Institute assumed responsibility for the publication in 1984 and nurtured it to become the most closely read periodical in the world pertaining exclusively to the Austrian School. Two years later, Murray Rothbard founded the Review of Austrian Economics to provide an outlet for scholarly articles, thereby relieving the AEN of this responsibility. 

The AEN began to emphasize reviews, topical pieces, and, most of all, the extended interview as an effective means of highlighting the newest contributions of Austrians to the literature. Today, interview subjects are now chosen from a variety of disciplines to reflect the full influence of the Austrian tradition. 

Over the years, the AEN has interviewed: Dominick T. Armentano, Walter Block, Paul Cantor, Thomas DiLorenzo, Gene Epstein, Roger Garrison, James Grant, Bettina Greaves, Gottfried Haberler, Henry Hazlitt, Randall G. Holcombe, Han-Hermann Hoppe, Jeffrey M. Herbener, Jesus Huerta de Soto, George Koether, Israel M. Kirzner, Peter G. Klein, Ludwig M. Lachmann, Fritz Machlup, Roberta Modugno, Hiroyuki Okon, Michael Prowse, George Reisman, Murray N. Rothbard, Joseph T. Salerno, G.L.S. Shackle, Karl Socher, Mark Thornton, Leland B. Yeager Pascal Salin, Frank Shostak, and Richard Vedder.

With the expansion and redesign of the AEN that began with Volume 21, the AEN seeks to put on the display the energy, creativity, and productivity of today's Austrian thinkers, who work in many fields to bring the insights of the tradition to bear on new issues of the day. It is a sign of the health and vigor of the Austrian movement that the list of thinkers slated for interview in the future grows ever longer.

The Austrian Economics Newsletter is available at no charge to students, faculty, and members on request.

Go to the archives of the Austrian Economics Newsletter.