Professor Roger Garrison is a leader in the field of Austrian macroeconomics, and has had a burning passion for his whole career to present Austrian business cycle theory in terms that mainstream economists can understand and identify. This book represents the culmination of his efforts in that regard.
He sets the Austrian theory against the Keynesian and mainstream theory, and shows how they are different in terms of the relationship between money, interest, capital, and investment. By doing this, he not only shows the precise way in which Keynesian theory makes unrealistic assumptions about the way the world works; he also shows how the Austrian theory more fully captures the actual workings of the market in real-world settings. He thereby goes a long way toward refining the positive theory.
In particular, this volume is useful (and famed) for its clear graphical exposition of the trade cycle theory. He shows the interrelationship between all the factors that affect investment, without leaving out critical dynamic issues such as time and the heterogeneity of the capital stock.
This book is useful for anyone who seeks to gain the clearest possible perspective on the mechanics of the business cycle. But it will be especially appreciated by those who are confronted with Keynesian-style modeling in school or professional life.
The book was published in 2006, and is made available here at a price far lower than the original publisher put on the book. The hope is that it will lead to wide distribution of this important and modern contribution to Austrian macroeconomics.
Roger W. Garrison received his doctorate degree from the University of Virginia in 1981. He is now Emeritus Professor of Economics at Auburn University in Alabama, where he taught Macroeconomics and History of Economic Thought (among other courses) from 1978 to 2012. He was a Post Doc Fellow at New York University in 1981. He was winner of the Smith Prize in Austrian Economics in 2001 for his book Time and Money: The Macroeconomics of Capital Structure. In 2003 he was named First Hayek Visiting Scholar at the London School of Economics, where he delivered LSE’s First Memorial Hayek Lecture. He served as President of the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics in 2004. His Austrian-oriented writings have appeared in Economic Inquiry, Journal of Macroeconomics, History of Political Economy, Journal of Economic Education, Independent Review, Cato Journal, Journal of Austrian Economics, and in a number of conference volumes and reference volumes. Most recently, his invited chapter titled “Friedman and the Austrians” appears in Robert A. Cord and J. Daniel Hammond, eds., Milton Friedman: Contributions to Economics and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, 2016.
Roger Garrison is professor emeritus of economics at Auburn University and Associated Scholar of the Mises Institute.
See his web page. Send him mail.
Recent Publications (2012–2016)
Earlier Publications (1979–2012) can be accessed through www.auburn.edu/~garriro.
Garrison, Roger W., “Friedman and the Austrians,” in Robert A. Cord and J, Daniel Hammond, eds., Milton Friedman: Contributions to Economics and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, 2016 (forthcoming).
Garrison, Roger W., “Cycles and Slumps in an Overly Aggregated Theoretical Framework,” in Steven Kates, ed., What’s Wrong with Keynesian Economics, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, 2016 (forthcoming).
Garrison, Roger W., Review of Randall G. Holcombe, “Advanced Introduction to the Austrian School of Economics, Journal of Economic Literature, 2015 (vol. 53, no. 1): 119-–21.
Garrison, Roger W. and Norman Barry, eds. 2014), Elgar Companion to Hayekian Economics, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK (2014).
Garrison, Roger W., Review Essay: “Alchemy Leveraged: The Federal Reserve and Modern Finance,” Kevin Dowd and Martin Hutchinson’s Alchemists of Loss: How Modern Finance and Government Regulation Crashed the Financial System, The Independent Review, 2012 (vol. 16, no. 3): 435–51.
Garrison, Roger W., “Natural Rates of Interest and Sustainable Growth,” The Cato Journal, 2012 (vol. 32, no. 2): 423–37.
Presented at the Mises Institute's "First Annual Advanced Instructional Conference in Austrian Economics" at Stanford University.
Journal of Macroeconomics, vol. 6, no. 2 (Spring), 1984, pp. 197-213.
