Austrian Economics Overview

Bob Murphy and David Howden explore essays honoring Joe Salerno, revealing how a new generation of Austrian economists is shaping the future of economic thought.

Speaking at the recent Rothbard Graduate Seminar, Dr. Joseph Salerno traces Murray Rothbard‘s intellectual development while in the economics Ph.D. program at Columbia University. Rothbard was dissatisfied with the popular schools of thought until he discovered Austrian economics.

Speaking at the recent Rothbard Graduate Seminar, Dr. Joseph Salerno traces Murray Rothbard‘s intellectual development while in the economics Ph.D. program at Columbia University. Rothbard was dissatisfied with the popular schools of thought until he discovered Austrian economics.

Mainstream economics is deterministic, holding that economic actors continue to move in one directions, not responding to changes in economic circumstances or incentives. The Austrians understand economics is about people engaged in purposeful action.

Mainstream economics is deterministic, holding that economic actors continue to move in one direction, not responding to changes in economic circumstances or incentives. The Austrians understand economics is about people engaged in purposeful action.

Before he revolutionized economics, Rothbard mastered the mainstream. Salerno traces Rothbard's path from neoclassical insider to Austrian iconoclast.

Influenced by the writings of the great Frederic Bastiat, Vilfredo Pareto promoted free markets and economic liberalism in 19th-century Europe. Pareto also made a number of important contributions to economic theory and practice.

Was Paul Heyne an ethicist who thought like an economist or was he instead an economist who thought like an ethicist? It was a bit of both. Heyne‘s popular text, The Economic Way of Thinking, educated a lot of students about how economics really works.

Nominalist ideas influenced the scientific revolution, shaping its departure from metaphysics, its mechanistic perspective, and the mathematization of all sciences. This paradigm has brought about some errors in economic thinking.

Mark Thornton reflects on the persistent misconceptions about capitalism in America and offers up a "Marxist interpretation" of our dilemma.