The Economics of Illusion

L. Albert Hahn

L. Albert Hahn was one of the most highly regarded economists and bankers in Germany before World War II, but he was unknown in the United States until this translation of The Economics of Illusion appeared in 1949. He immigrated to the United States in 1940. This book is his frontal attack on the Keynesian system, which he calls “the economics of illusion.” Hahn shows how government spending creates a false prosperity, and never more than in wartime. He explodes many of Keynes’s fallacies — and with great precision too, because, it turns out, Hahn himself once advanced these same fallacies before he saw their errors. So he writes with the passion of a convert.

Ludwig von Mises thought very highly of Hahn’s work, and none other than Henry Hazlitt has written the introduction to this classic anti-Keynesian text.

Economics of Illusion by L. Albert Hahn

No content found

Meet the Author
L. Albert Hahn

L. Albert Hahn was one of the most highly regarded economists and bankers in Germany before the war but he was unknown in the United States until the 1949 translation of The Economics of Illusion, his frontal attack on the Keynesian system.

Mises Daily L. Albert Hahn
It is a regrettable fact that most of what is written nowadays in our field moves in such esoteric spheres and uses such technical language that it can no longer be read or understood even by a businessman interested in economic theory.
Mises Daily L. Albert Hahn
If you take the trouble to interrogate a large number of economists about the economic future of the country you will find that an overwhelming majority argues in the following way: In about two years...
Mises Daily L. Albert Hahn
[This is the title essay of Hahn’s The Economics of Illusion, his frontal attack on the Keynesian system. It is based on a lecture delivered at the Studiengesellschaft fur Wirtschaftspolitik, Zurich...
View L. Albert Hahn bio and works
References

NY: New York Institute of Finance, 1949.