Government statistics on worker productivity combine many errors of aggregation such as "average prices" and the total purchasing power of money. So it's unlikely that productivity numbers tell us much that's useful.
Shortcomings in the government's handling of monetary matters, of credit expansion, and the disastrous consequences of lowering the rate of interest gave birth to the ideas which finally generated the slogan "stabilization."
Values of goods are not static things that can be used for central planning. Values apply only to a particular transaction at a particular place and at a given time by human beings.
Brazil's most severe recession in over a century, which lasted over two years and saw unemployment of nearly 12 percent, offers empirical support for the Austrian business cycle theory.
Presented at the Mises Institute's "First Annual Advanced Instructional Conference in Austrian Economics" at Stanford University.
Much of the media discussion around the 30th anniversary of the Berlin Wall's fall will focus on American military politics and the politicians of the time. But to truly understand why the Soviet system in Eastern Europe collapsed, we must look to Mises's pioneering work on economic planning.
When an elected official or government bureaucrat interferes with a valid, non-coerced exchange, they may appear to be helping one individual when they are actually harming a foundation of modern society; free exchange of goods and services.
Market prices reveal critical information about sellers, buyers, and market demand. But government interference in markets substitutes a fake version of reality that leads to impoverishment.
More than half of the people in the world currently live in urban areas or cities, in spite of it being more expensive to do so. Why?
Dressing up the history of the world, and its economic development, in terms of transaction costs is mostly not very helpful.
