Other Schools of Thought

Prompted by an online debate about whether economics belongs with the hard sciences, Bob reviews common defenses of mainstream practice and explains why they don’t settle the scientific status of the field.

In 2004, Ralph Raico, presented a 10-hour lecture series on the history of political thought. “History: The Struggle for Liberty” presented a concise summary of the more than 400 years of political thought that underlies the political ideology of laissez-faire.

While some economists are celebrating the awarding of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics to three economists who are relatively friendly to free markets, we should not forget that most Nobel winners have been unrepentant statists and socialists.

Ryan and political scientist Joseph Solis-Mullen talk about how taxes, war, and the state are all part of a centuries-old formula for impoverishing the productive class while enriching the government class. 

A long-enduring myth about money is that we need a flexible or "elastic" currency for the economy to grow. Economist Jonathan Newman joins us to talk about why this has never been true. 

Austrian economists differ with the economic mainstream in many ways, but the break on utility theory is especially critical in understanding the split between the two schools of economic thought.

Greg Kaza reviews Brian Domitrovic's The Emergence of Arthur Laffer. Alienated from academia during the stagflation era, Laffer was able to reach policymakers by presenting his ideas in a simple way, such as with his famous napkin Laffer curve.

Economics, at its core, is the study of cause-and-effect relationships—analyzing how scarce resources, which have alternative uses, are allocated.

Mainstream economists claim that they can use econometric models to emulate human action and, thus, create an economic laboratory. These models, however, cannot tell us about cause-and-effect, which is vital to understanding praxeology and economic behavior.

Mainstream economists claim that they can use econometric models to emulate human action and, thus, create an economic laboratory. These models, however, cannot tell us about cause-and-effect, which is vital to understanding praxeology and economic behavior.