Austrian economist John Cochran was interviewed for “La Escuela Austriaca desde Adentro” (The Austrian School from Inside), Vol. III edited by Adrián Ravier, which is scheduled for publication later this year. Here is that interview.
Dr. John P. Cochran is Emeritus Dean-School of Business and Emeritus Professor of Economics at Metropolitan State College of Denver. He served as Dean of the School of Business at Metro State College from January 2004 to June 2011. Prior to serving as dean, he was Chair and Professor of Economics at Metropolitan State College of Denver where is he taught economics beginning in 1981. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder and is a Senior Scholar of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, the leading research and educational center of classical liberalism, libertarian political theory, and the Austrian school of economics. He received his PhD in economics from the University of Colorado-Boulder in 1985. He is the author with Fred R. Glahe of The Hayek-Keynes Debate: Lessons for Current Business Cycle Research (Edwin Mellen Press 1999). He has published numerous scholarly articles on the refinement and development of the Mises/Hayek Austrian theory of the business cycle. In addition to his scholarly publications, Dr. Cochran has provided commentary on current economic conditions in the Daily Articles at www.mises.org and in the local media.
In recognition of his scholarly contributions, Dr. Cochran was awarded Metropolitan State College of Denver’s Golden Key National Honor Society Outstanding Researcher/Scholar Award for 2002 and in 2004 received Metro State’s Distinguished Service award. In 2010 he was recognized by the Colorado Council for Economic Education as a “Friend of Economic Education.” He was on the faculty at the first Young America Foundation seminar on economic education, The Reagan Ranch Program: Intellectual Giants, The Road to Freedom: A Friedrich Hayek Seminar, May 2003. In March 2003, Dr. Cochran delivered the Ludwig Von Mises Memorial Lecture at the Austrian Scholars Conference 9 at the Ludwig Von Mises Institute.
ADRIAN RAVIER: Thank you Professor Cochran for this opportunity to let us know a little more about yourself. Please, explain how you become interested in economics.
JOHN P. COCHRAN: I was first exposed to economics while an undergraduate engineering student at University of Arizona. I took three courses, a one semester overview covering macro and micro principles, a money and banking course, and an intermediate micro course. All were part of a program which would provide an engineering degree and an MBA in five years. I found the econ much more interesting than the engineering. The interest in engineering declined so much that I dropped pursuit of the engineering degree and spent 6 or 7 years teaching martial arts and running a Kenpo Karate studio. It was the Kenpo which brought me to Colorado. When Idecided to continue my education, economics looked more interesting and promising than a return to engineering. I was fortunate to have Gerald Stone and Ralph Byrns as professors at Metro State where I completed my undergraduate work. Byrns and Stone were the authors of a very successful principles book (used by Rothbard at one time) which was one of the first principles books to incorporate natural rate, supply side, and public choice arguments. They included recognition of the work of Mises and Hayek. Stone’s follow up book, Core Economics, is still available. They directed me on a senior project that had me do graduate level work on the controversy around the Phillips Curve and the natural rate theory. This initiated an interest in the policy effectiveness debate which had been triggered by stagflation of the 1970s and early 1980s and the apparent failure of Keynesian economics. In a roundabout way this eventually led me to Hayek and Mises.
AR: What can you tell about your experience completing your PhD in Economics in the University of Colorado-Boulder? When did you get in touch for the first time with Austrian Economics?
“La Escuela Austriaca desde Adentro” (The Austrian School from Inside), Vol. III edited by Adrián Ravier, which is scheduled for publication later this year.
JOHN P. COCHRAN: When I started graduate school at CU-Boulder (Fall 1978), Colorado still required a History of Thought class required and a prelim in Thought for all PhD students. I was fortunate to have had Fred Glahe as the professor. He was an active fellow traveller who had funded visits to Boulder by many Austrians, unfortunately most prior to my time on campus, including Mises, Hayek, Rothbard (whom I did get to hear and meet- at his best ripping apart the Laffer curve), Lachmann, and Kirzner (who I also was able hear). Audio of the talks by Mises, Lachmann, and Hayek are, courtesy of Professor Glahe, available at mises.org. While it did not make that big an impact at the time, Fred’s reading list included Austrians – capital theory, the influence of the scholastic fathers on the development of economics, and Menger, Walras, and Jevons de-homogenized. Sadly CU dropped the thought requirement several years later.
My interest in the policy effectiveness debate, originally triggered as an undergrad working with Byrns and Stone, was reinforced by the two semester macro sequence. Reading included Patinkin, Leijonhufvud, Clower, Yeager, Keynes’s General Theory; lots of monetary disequilibrium perspective with an emphasis on information and coordination failure. Professor Dugan, a student of Arthur Marget, introduced me to Marget’s Theory of Prices, D.H. Robertson, Lavington, and Keynes’s pre-General Theory monetary theory.
Right after I completed course work, CU hired a Stanford PhD, now at the University of Denver, Tracy Mott. Professor Mott was a monetary/history of thought scholar with a strong interest in Kalecki and Keynes. While I took no classes from Professor Mott, I did make use of his reading lists. Despite their differences of policy perspectives, he worked effectively with Dr. Glahe to give students an opportunity to work in areas in macro outside the mainstream. Frank Vorhies completed his dissertation on Marx, Mises, and Money under their tutelage. Frank suggested I see Dr. Glahe about a topic. Fred handed me about three pages of notes on the Hayek-Keynes debate he had used at a professional meeting and suggested I turn them into a dissertation. That started a nearly four year journey which was essentially a second graduate program (mostly self taught) on Hayek, Austrianeconomics especially monetary and capital theory. Hayek led me to Mises and Rothbard. This was all mostly done prior to Mises Institute and the vast wealth of resources they have since made available. Thank heaven for Kelley reprints, used book stores, and Sheed and Ward. Thanks to Fred Glahe, I received an Earhardt fellowship for which I am extremely grateful. I probably completed the last non-quantitative dissertation at CU. Luck and timing – five years earlier or five years later and I would not have had the opportunity to pursue the research.
AR: I understand that you are especially interested in Monetary Theory and Macroeconomics.
JOHN P. COCHRAN: Yes, the stagnation/stagflation from the early 1970s into the 1980s and the apparent inability of the then dominant Keynesian orthodoxy to either explain or provide guidance to restoring prosperity attracted my interest as an undergraduate to monetary/macro theory. The interest continued into graduate school and is probably what made me very receptive to Hayek. Keynes, not what became the Keynesian orthodoxy,was and still is of interest because he along with the Austrian saw macro problems arising from issues related to time and money. Both Keynes and the Austrians were trying to model a money-production-exchange economy not a timeless barter economy of GE micro. Austrians to me clearly had the edge due to Keynes’s lack of a comprehensive capital theory. A challenge for Austrians still is addressing Keynes’s questions about investor expectations. What happens if these expectations are significantly wrong, particularly if they consistently underestimate potential returns? Are there mechanisms which over time will led market participants to recognize errorand correct expectations in ways that will lead to an eventual recovery? Higgs regime uncertainty is a promising avenue to pursue here. I did venture outside monetary theory briefly with a couple of papers with ProfessorGlahe on separating school and state. These cost me a promotion early in my career until I re-packaged them as anti-voucher papers.
AR: What do you think about the work of Roger W. Garrison, and specially the contributions he developed in Time and Money (2001)?
JOHN P. COCHRAN: My initial reaction to the book appeared in QJAE in 2001 (http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae4_3_2.pdf). The issue is a very good summary of Austrian reaction, both positive and negative.Richard M. Ebeling’s review (http://mises.org/daily/657) of about the same time is also very good. The book combined with Roger’s contributions to Snowden’s and Vane’s advanced macro books, and his HOPE article re-engaging the too often overlooked overconsumption aspects of a boom have been especially important in engaging non-Austrians to re-examine the Austrian perspective. Professor Garrison’s 2009 Cato Journal article “Interest-Rate Targeting During the Great Moderation” deserves more attention than it has received. After a recent re-read of the three chapters, 7, 8, and 9 in Time and Money on Keynes, I am beginning to believe the book really lays out how Hayek could have (should have?) responded to the General Theory. Time and Money coupled with Peter Lewin’s Capital in Disequilibrium are perhaps the two most important post Kirzner/Rothbard books for those interested in the development of capital-structure based Austrian economics.
AR: I remember your article on “Use and Abuse of Equilibrium in Business Cycle Theory”. Did Garrison abuse of equilibrium in his model?
JOHN P. COCHRAN: One of my earlier (and favourite) works with Fred Glahe. A slightly revised version is Chapter 11 of our 1999 book on the Hayek-Keynes debate. In my view Garrison’s work and its use of an equilibrium concept fits in just about right – consistent with the use by Mises and Rothbard – the Austrian middle ground between the equilibrium always model of new classical economics and Shackle-Lachmann equilibrium never approach.
AR: What do you mean with Capital in disequilibrium?
JOHN P. COCHRAN: I picked the term up from Peter Lewin’s book. It is a great description of the misdirection of production created during an unsustainable boom. One of the advantages of Garrison’s diagrams is it gives a picture this disequilibrium phenomena created by monetary misdirection of production ─ the problem of “duelling production structures.” The overconsumption and malinvestment of the boom creates significant plan coordination failures. Increasing spending in general will not solve and most likely will make worse the underlying factors causing the bust. The cycle is a disequilibrium problem; a mini-calculation failure. This is addressed in more detail in my “Capital in Disequilibrium: Understanding the “Great Recession’ and Potential for Recovery.” The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, 13, no. 3, 42-63 (2010) athttp://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae13_3_4.pdf .
AR: How is the current state of Macroeconomics and Austrian Macroeconomics? Do we have recent developments and advances?
JOHN P. COCHRAN: I would estimate that the current state of Austrian capital structure-based macro is healthier than modern macro thanks in part to the recognition of many that the current crisis had Austrian elements. Axel Leijonhufvud, in his 2008 commentary “Keynes and the Crisis” (Center for Economic Policy Research Policy Insight No. 23) is a good example. Even very mainstream macro economists such as John Taylor have been arguing that the Fed, in the early 2000s left interest rates too low for too long. Steve Hanke, especially in his Globe Asia columns, has often used Austrian analysis.
The quick return to knee jerk Keynesian policy recommendations does not speak well for the state of macro in general, but the number of economists who joined the February 2009 Cato letter in the Wall Street Journal against the then proposed but eventually passed U. S. stimulus bill was encouraging.
Developments and advances: Joe Salerno has some very intersting work in progress which is expanding our understanding of the over-consumption aspects of the boom and applying the analysis to the current recession and slow recovery. Selgin, Lastrapes, and White have a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Macroeconomics (currently available as Cato working paper no. 2 December 2010), “Has the Fed Been a Failure?” which is excellent. Garrison and I have both been emphasizing how central bank expansionary activity often accompanies a real shock effectively keeping the interest rate brake a la Hayek from working effectively to stop a boom before the malinvestments-overconsumption procedes too far. I understand you have a paper about to come out (QJAE) that builds on Hayek’s argument that monetary stimulus when unused resourses exist still misdirects production. The policy may provide increased (temporary) employment now, but at the cost of even more unemployment later as the misdirection is discovered and corrected. The recent renewed interest in Robert Higgs’s concept of regime uncertainty is very encouraging. At the risk of leaving out important contributors, Cwik, Mulligan, Bagus and Howden, Hoffmann and Schnabl are doing some very interesting work as well. Of course Boettke, Garrison, Lewin, and Horwitz continue to make contributions. I would like to think my 2010 QJAE piece and my forthcoming paper are advances in our understanding of recession and recovery.
Empirical/histroical work on capital structure-based macro is hampered because the data in the traditional product and income accounts fits the Keynesian conception of a hydraulic macro economy well, but not a capital-based view. Austrian capital theory implies that a significant portion of current economic activity is directed not to current, but to future consumption.
Mark Skousen in his The Structure of Production with a New Introduction (2007 [1990], pp. xi–xxxix) provides an excellent summary. Skousen recommends moving toward a measure such as Gross Domestic Expenditures to get a more realistic picture of the importance of business spending (future oriented) in total current economic activity. Whereas consumption appears to be approximately 70 percent of the economy based on GDP, a measure of economic activity, such as GDE, is more in line with a capital structure view of the economy. With GDE consumption is closer to 30 percent (Skousen, 2007, p. xvi). I think George Reisman has also done work here. More needs to be done!
Sudha Shenoy’s 2007 “Investment Chains Through History or An Historian’s Outline of Development: ‘Using Goods of Ever Higher Orders’” (Indian Journal Economics and Business, Special Issue, 185-215) should be studied by anyone who truly wants to understand the importance of capital structure to growth an development.
AR: You have co-authored a book with Fred Glahe on the debate between Keynes and Hayek. Why do you think that this debate is receiving new attention?
JOHN P. COCHRAN: The attention is a plus. One of the themes of the book was that Hayek and Keynes both presented alternatives to the neoclassical modelling and were attempts to actually understand how a money-production economy works. Both placed a significant emphasis on the role of time and money in creating coordination failures. The subtitle of the book was “lessons for current business cycle research.” If more attention had been paid to Hayekian insights we would not be facing the problems we are now. That said, Keynes and the Austrians are much both relevant now. This crisis exposed the weakness of the new classical approach including not only real business cycle theory but also its new Keynesian branch. The crisis also brought back, unfortunately, a too simplistic Keynesian approach to fiscal policy. This despite overwhelming empirical evidence of itsineffectiveness especially attempts to generate recovery by subsidizing consumption spending with temporary tax reductions, extended unemployment benefits, and food stamps. Many newly re-born Keynesians should read T. W. Hutchinson’s (The Politics and Philosophy of Economics: Marxians, Keynesians and Austrians, Routledge 1981, pp. 108-154) discussion of Keyes versus Keynesians. Keynes in 1937 with British unemployment around 12% sounds more like former Kansas City district bank Fed President Thomas Hoenig than Fed Chairman Bernanke or Paul Krugman.
AR: The current monetary policy that the Fed is applying has developed a special interest on the Japanese case. Can you make a summary of the conclusions you have reached with your own research on the topic?
JOHN P. COCHRAN: One of the costs of assuming and administrative position: I last really looked in depth at Japan in 2004. Those interested can access my thoughts in “Capital-Based Macroeconomics: Boom and Bust in Japan and the U.S.” (Indian Journal of Economics and Business, vol. 3, no. 1, 1-16) with Noah Yetter Fred R. Glahe at http://www.ijeb.com/Issues/data/June04_1_cbmbabijatus.pdf .
My instinct is Japan should be an example of how too much monetary ease following a crisis impedes the restructuring needed to liquidate malinvestments and realign resource distribution into a more sustainable structure of production. Loose money and too much Keynesian consumer oriented stimulus led not to recovery in Japan, but to Japan stagnating for years. Following such a policy is likely to do the same for US, if we don’t move into stagflation, which is a more likely result if the Fed is unable to unwind its balance sheet in a timely manner.
AR: Which similarities and differences can you find between the great depression, the Japanese crisis and the American subprime crisis?
JOHN P. COCHRAN: The American subprime crisis was, to me, a double Hayekian boom-bust. The first boom-bust was induced with the Fed and monetary expansion ‘piggybacking’ on a productivity shock (see the above cited article). The subprime crisis illustrates what you have written about recently ─ the central bank (Fed) was overly expansionary beginning almost from the trough of the first post 2000 U.S. recession. This time the Fed over stimulated on top of a policy induced housing bubble and an expanding world supply of savings (Thanks to Roger Garrison for this insight. Pierre Lemieux’s Somebody in Charge: A Solution to Recessions? is excellent on the other policy (non central bank) related causes of the crisis.). The two US related crises of this century, like the Great Depression, illustrate how money can mis-direct production even if aggregate prices are relatively stable. The second one, 2007, should be a warning that monetary stimulus even when reources appear to be abundant can be long term destabilzing.
Japan appears to me (see the 2004 article on Japan and US) to have been more of a traditional Misean boom-bust directly initiated by central bank policy.
Japan and the US compared to the Great depression may provide support to Hayek’s later (1970s) arguments that once a crisis occurs, a collapse of the money spending stream must be prevented. While collapse was prevented, it most likely could have been prevented with a smaller expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet and without the mondustrial policy aspects of the response where it appeared the Fed was picking winners and losers (See Jeffrey Rogers Hummel’s “Ben Bernanke versus Milton Friedman: The Federal Reserve’s Emergence as the U.S. Economy’s Central Planner” (The Independent Review, 2011 15:1 (Spring): 485–518). It is not clear if recovery has been aided by the policy response.
AR: What do you think about the policies that Obama and the Fed are taking to solve this problem?
JOHN P. COCHRAN: Probably best answered by a letter I sent to the Denver Post in response to an editorial of theirs praising recent (August 2011)remarks by Bernanke. The Post did not publish but I did post the commentson the Mises blog.
“In your August 27, editorial “Fed chief speaks loud and clear” (http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_18767027 ) you correctly summarize that the U.S. economy should bounce back and that what is standing in the way, is the people in charge. But Chairman Bernanke’s analysis is wrong and does not identify the true culprits. The economy has been effectively held back by the regime uncertainty created by the anti-market rhetoric and environment emanating from the leadership in Washington. A similar environment forestalled recovery in the 1930s. The Fed’s near zero interest rate policy in the 2003-05 period was, if not the cause, the enabler of the events leading to the 2007 financial meltdown. The current Fed commitment to long term near zero interest rates, which has been appropriately criticized by retiring Kansas City Fed chairman Thomas Hoenig, now threatens to revive the stagflation of the 1970s.
Fiscal policy has been even more wrong and ineffective. The U. S. should not have had to endure the lingering slow recovery and debt burdens that were the predictable effects of a return to crude Keynesian policy based on the old idea that vast amounts of public spending could … cure a recession and ignite a new era of government-led prosperity. Compare the administration’s prediction that the 2009 $862 billion stimulus package would keep the unemployment rate below 8% to the February 9, 2009 Cato Institute letter (WSJ, p. A14), signed by over 200 economists, which argued that support for the stimulus was “a triumph of hope over experience to believe that government spending will help the U.S. economy … .” This is as true now as it was then. While better economic policy may unfortunately have to await new leadership in Washington (and at Fed), that better policy, is now, and was at the time of the passage of the failed stimulus, a policy that coupled with a return to sound Money “should focus on reforms that remove impediments to work, saving, investment, and production. Lower tax rates and a reduction of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth.” Hope that we don’t have to endure a lost decade of poor economic performance because of this enormous failure of leadership, both political and economic, to retain a hard learned lesson from history –Keynesian spending policy is a dead end policy.
For running commentary see my March 09 “Free and Prosperous Commonwealth” (http://mises.org/daily/3373/A-Free-and-Prosperous-Commonwealth ), June 09 “Return of the Dead Hand” (http://mises.org/daily/3516/Return-of-the-Dead-Hand ), and the October 20 “Are the Austrians Too Harsh?”
AR: What do you mean by Sound Money. Which is the Austrian solution for this problem? Why do we have so many difficulties to find a unique answer for those problems?
JOHN P. COCHRAN: I was trying to draw a contrast between stable money often advocated by supporters of central banking and the Austrian approach. Sound money is a non-national market chosen money operating in a banking system subject the rule of law. For more detail see comments below on banking freedom or my Mises lecture published in a revised form as “Capital, Monetary Calculation, and the Trade Cycle: The Importance of Sound Money.” (The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, vol. 7, no. 1, 17-25) http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae7_1_2.pdf .
AR: Do you believe Free Banking is the solution? Is there any book or article that shows the Fed the transition to return to Sound Money?
JOHN P. COCHRAN: Free Banking based on a market chosen commodity money properly defined and understood ─ I actually prefer the term banking freedom which comes from Mises’s Manipulation Of Money and Credit(1998, p. 45), but I picked the term up as a suggestion from Larry Sechrest ─ is certainly a preferred institutional alternative to government fiat money and a central bank, especially with respect to the monetary institutions ability to generate cycles. This was, in my interpretation, Mises’s view (see below). Larry White has a very interesting short piece in the just released fall 2011 Cato Journal that is very good (http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj31n3/cj31n3-5.pdf). I would suggest anyone who wants to begin to think about a return to gold and sound money begin with Rothbard’s “The Case for a Genuine Gold Dollar.” Salerno’s recently released collectionof essays, Money, Sound and Unsound (http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj31n3/cj31n3-5.pdf) is also highly recommended.
AR: What is your opinion on the debate on fractional reserve banking between Rothbard and Huerta de Soto on one hand, and White and Selgin on the other?
JOHN P. COCHRAN: My most recent thoughts on this debate can be found at the Cobden Centre (http://www.cobdencentre.org/author/cochranj/ ). The debate is important, but secondary to the need to eliminate central banking with a return to a market determined sound money. As far as business cycles go while 100% reserves would certainly eliminate credit creation as a source of economic fluctuations, I tend to line up with Mises’s view which is to me very compatible with the Selgin –White position,
Free banking is the only method for the prevention of the dangers inherent
in credit expansion. It would, it is true, not hinder a slow credit expansion,
kept within very narrow limits, on the part of cautious banks which
provide the public with all the information required about their financial
status. But under free banking it would have been impossible for credit
expansion with all its inevitable consequences to have developed into a
regular—one is tempted to say normal—feature of the economic system.
Only free banking would have rendered the market economy secure
against crises and depression. [And] [t]here is no reason whatever to abandon
the principle of free enterprise in the field of banking. (Mises 1998, p. 440)
At present some form of free banking seems a more practical and likely occurrence. Such reform may have to begin by first removing all legal barriers to private monies much like Ed Stringham has been arguing relative to private provision of police and protection services. The at least three margin decision between goods, money, and assets and the related savings-investment nexus and present goods-future goods trade-offs are highly complicated and at least to me, based solely on my understanding of the economics, favours the banking freedom side. I am open to be convinced otherwise and I also recognize not all the arguments for 100% reserves are economic. I do find the recent movement to extend the 100% reserve arguments to arguments against most term intermediation troubling.
AR: I have seen that most of your research articles are published in the QJAE. I remember some Austrian economists, like Peter Boettke, asking us to publish our work in the mainstream journals. What do you think about that comment?
JOHN P. COCHRAN: We should all be working to do not just Austrian economics, but good economics. Since to many Austrians, the two coincide, I do think we should be working to make the Austrian journals as good as they can be which would include submitting some of our best work there. Given that right now that the Austrian journals don’t get as much prestige in the academy as they should this strategy may be much easier to do for someone like me whose career path led to a teaching institution and not a major research institution.
Ultimately Austrian economists need influence (and jobs in more prestigious institutions) that does for a time require publication in the more widely recognized outlets. But I would still urge some of the up and coming very prolific writer/researchers to send some of their best work to Austrian journals to help eventually raise the status of the journals.
I have almost always cited main stream work in my writings, even those in QJAE. Have had some interesting correspondence from the authors cited, some very positive.
AR: I imagine several young economists and Austrian economists reading this interview. Do you have any suggestions for them?
JOHN P. COCHRAN: There are some incredible new role models just building careers and reputations in the US, Europe, and South America ─ very encouraging for someone who took several years to get publications tied to Austrian analysis. Watch what they are doing, how they blend and use theory with historical analysis, and emulate them. If you are just getting started, try to study with them. These ‘youngsters” are building on the work done by Block, Salerno, White, Boettke, Rizzo etc who kept Austrian economics alive and well. Now they are trying to make Austrian economics more accessible to the public and the profession. Both are essential.
After you have built a solid career of scholarly accomplishment, don’t rule out getting involved in administration – department chair or dean. Relative to my scholarly output, it did bring it almost to halt for awhile (some may think that was no great loss) even though I originally thought it would be like barbed-wire on the banister to stop granny from sliding down – it would slow me down a might but wouldn’t stop me.
However, such service can raise the esteem of Austrian economists in the eyes of the academy outside the economics departments and can have some influence on resources, hires, and curriculum. I did have one of the new giants who was at an institution hindering hires of free market economists remark to me he sure wished that I was his dean.
AR: Thank you Professor Cochran.
Publications:
Cochran, John P. 2011. “Hayek and the 21st Century Boom-Bust and Recession-Recovery” Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Vol. 14, no. 3 (Fall): 263-287.
Cochran, John P. 2012. “Review Essay: A Crisis of Authority: Lemieux’s Somebody in Charge: A Solution to Recessions?” The Independent Review.
Cochran, John P. (2011). “Keynes Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern Economics. By Nicholas Wapshott. London and New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2011.” Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Vol. 14, no. 4 (Winter):474-479.
Cochran, John P. (2010). “Capital in Disequilibrium: Understanding the “Great Recession’ and Potential for Recovery.” The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, 13:3 pp. 42-63.
Cochran, John P. (2010). “Review of Free Banking: Theory, History, and a Laissez-Faire Model. By Larry Sechrest. Auburn, Alabama: The Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2008. Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, 13:4, pp. 120-25.
Cochran, John P., Yetter, Noah, and Glahe, Fred R. (2004). “Capital-Based Macroeconomics: Boom and Bust in Japan and the U.S.” Indian Journal of Economics and Business, vol. 3, no. 1, 1-16.
Cochran, John P. (2004). “Capital, Monetary Calculation, and the Trade Cycle: The Importance of Sound Money.” The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, vol. 7, no. 1, 17-25.
Cochran, John P., Call, Steven T. and Glahe, Fred R. (2003). “Austrian Business Cycles: Variation on a Theme.” The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, vol. 6, no. 1, 67-73.
Cochran, John P. (2001). “Capital-Based Macroeconomics: Recent Developments and Extensions of Austrian Business Cycle Theory.” The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 17-25.
Cochran, John P. and Call, Steven T. (2000). “Free Banking and Credit Creation: Implications for Business Cycle Theory.” The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 35-50.
Cochran, John P., Call, Steven T., and Glahe, Fred R. (1999). “Credit Creation or Financial Intermediation? Fractional Reserve Banking in a Growing Economy.” The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, vol. 2, no. 3, 53-64.
Cochran, John P. and Glahe, Fred R. (1999). The Hayek-Keynes Debate:Lessons for Current Business Cycle Research. Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press. Paperback reprint 2009.
Cochran, John P. and Call, Steven T. (1998). “The Role of Fractional Reserve Banking and Financial Intermediation in the Money Supply Process: Keynes and the Austrians.” The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. 1(3): 29-40.
Cochran, John P. (1998). “Review of Central Banking in Theory and Practice, Alan S. Blinder, Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 1998.”
Cochran, John P. and Glahe, Fred. (1997) “Praxeology and the Development of Human Capital: The Separation of School and State.” Cultural Dynamics 9(2): 255-71.
Cochran, John P. and Glahe, Fred R. (1996). “Privatization True and False: Private Enterprise and Education.” Journal of Private Enterprise 12(1), Fall: 108-21.
Cochran, John P. and Glahe, Fred R. (1994). “The Keynes-Hayek Debate: Lessons for Contemporary Business Cycle Theorists.” History of Political Economy 26(1), Spring: 69-94.
Cochran, John P. and Glahe, Fred R. (1992). “The Use and Abuse of Equilibrium in Business Cycle Theory: A Praxeological Approach.” Cultural Dynamics 5(3): 356-70.
Cochran, John P. and Brown, R, Michael. (1989). “What’s Wrong Here?” Economic Inquiry 27(3), July: 541-45.
