History of the Austrian School of Economics

Was Rothbard's harsh criticism of Adam Smith justified, or was Smith actually an early and valiant proponent of laissez-faire? Hunter Hastings and Jonathan Newman join Jeff Deist to discuss. 

Many insights of Menger are nowadays part of standard economics. Many more are preserved in the distinct school of Austrian economics. This applies particularly to the notions of foresight and the role of uncertainty.

Gary North shows how Rothbard always had the ability to go to the central issue in a debate. He wrote clearly. He wrote continuously. He wrote for almost anyone who would give him an opportunity to put an idea in print.

Bruno Leoni's Freedom and the Law can be the starting-point for a more "classical" understanding of libertarian natural law actually rooted in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition. 

The only relevant thing is that indirect exchange and money exist because the conditions for their existence were and are present.

That gold was used as money in the past is merely a historical fact. But the fact that gold was a form of private money, and thus not easily manipulated for government schemes, made it a target of countless intellectual and governmental assaults.

When the subjective theory was formulated in the 1870s, it suffered from the defect of wrongly thinking that economic calculation could occur without prices. This defect gave socialists help in making their case.

That gold was used as money in the past is merely a historical fact. But the fact that gold was a form of private money, and thus not easily manipulated for government schemes, made it a target of countless intellectual and governmental assaults. 

It is striking that the major resurgence of Scholastic ideas came out of Austria in the late 19th century, a country that had avoided a revolutionary political or theological upheaval. If we look at Menger's own teachers, we find successors to the Scholastic tradition.

In this plenary address from the 2021 Austrian Economic Research Conference, Samuel Bostaph, an economist and historian of economic thought, discusses how Ludwig von Mises preserved and developed the work of Carl Menger.