Largely confined to the outer fringe of “scientific” economics, Austrians have to jump with glee at any mention—positive or negative—that their theories receive in mainstream journals. It is with this attitude that I examine Paul Samuelson’s article in The Quarterly Journal of Economics entitled “A Summing Up.” Historical Background This article
THE INTEREST PROBLEM Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk’s three-volume work, Capital and Interest , is a classic, both because of its brilliant analysis and its witty exposition. The first volume provides a history and critique of all preceding explanations of the “interest problem.” For Böhm-Bawerk, the task of the interest theorist was to explain why a
In a previous article , I explained Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk’s conception of the “interest problem.” Specifically, why could a capitalist earn an effortless flow of real wealth, year after year, from his fund of capital? To state the problem in an equivalent form, why is it that a capitalist can spend, say, $1,000 on labor and raw materials, in
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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.