Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics

Do Free-Market Economists Practice What They Teach?

The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics
Downloads

 

Volume 5, No. 4 (Winter 2002)

 

This short piece on methodology concerns the extent to which the knowledge assumptions of the economics employed by free-market critics of public policy logically permits any meaningful critiquings of government intervention to take place at all.  The author applies this question first to those who generally employ a perfect-information-based economics, which I argue, in this case, gives rise to a contradiction between theory and empirical application. The elimination of this contradiction, I maintain, is accomplished most truthfully when the underlying economic theory allows for the possibility of genuine human error to occur.  Admitting this possibility, however, itself appears to give rise to a paradox, which I attempt to resolve by using what the more apposite economic theory teaches us about the nature of the market process.

CITE THIS ARTICLE

Ikeda, Sanford. “Do Free-Market Economists Practice What They Teach?” The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 5, No. 4 (Winter 2002): 37–41

All Rights Reserved ©
What is the Mises Institute?

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. 

Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

Become a Member
Mises Institute