The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics (QJAE) is a refereed journal that promotes the development and extension of Austrian economics and the analysis of contemporary issues in the mainstream of economics from an Austrian perspective..
The Keynesian Multiplier Concept Ignores Crucial Opportunity Costs
The Keynesian multiplier is a concept embedded in macroeconomic thought, policy, textbooks, and widely taught in classrooms.
Why Keynesian Concepts Cannot Be Used to Explain Pre-Keynesian Economic Thought: A Reader’s Guide to Classical Economic Theory
This note is built around five issues that center on the damage to economic theory caused by Keynes and his General Theory.
Our Classical Macro Heritage
This paper addresses the key shortcoming in the world of macro modeling, from a history-of-thought perspective.
Jean–Baptiste Say: Revolutionary, Entrepreneur, Economist, by Evert Schoorl
This present volume is a full–length biography of Say, and presents a detailed account of the life and intellectual development of the founder of the French Liberal School.
The Marginal Efficiency of Capital
The purpose of this paper is to explain the marginal efficiency of capital. The net present value diagram is derived and used to illustrate how the interest rate regulates the intertemporal allocation of resources.
Gun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming the Jews and ‘’Enemies of the State,’’ by Stephen P. Halbrook
How did Hitler do it? There is no shortage of theories or writings related to the rise of the Third Reich and the subsequent Holocaust. Halbrook, however, offers a compelling and important account of the role of gun control in aiding Hitler’s goals of exterminating the Jews and other “enemies of the state.”
Review of Defending the Undefendable II: Freedom in All Realms, by Walter E. Block
Walter Block is at his finest when he subjects the most loathsome jobs and nastiest behaviors to logical libertarian scrutiny. Block’s Defending the Undefendable has needled and irritated an entire generation of readers
The Federal Reserve and the Financial Crisis, by Ben S. Bernanke
There is trouble lurking in each of the book’s four chapters. The text gets off on a wrong foot as Bernanke overviews the origins and purposes of the Fed.
IHS and the Rebirth of Austrian Economics: Some Reflections on 1974–1976
Starting in 1974, the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS), based at that time in Menlo Park, California, began an ambitious plan to resurrect the then near to dead Austrian school of thought in economics.
Welfare and Old Age in Europe and North America, edited by Bernard Harris
Welfare and Old Age in Europe and North America is a fascinating account of the rise of the welfare state in continental Europe and the U.K. The inclusion of North America in its title is misleading because it certainly does not discuss the mutual-aid-to-welfare-state transitions of Canada or Mexico but only offers a theory in one contribution as to why mandatory health insurance failed to be enacted in the U.S. early in the twentieth century.
The Economic Consequences of Loan Maturity Mismatching in the Unhampered Economy
Some economists of the Austrian School contend that business cycles are created when banks use the proceeds of short–term time deposits to create longer-term loans.
Comment on Dolan on Austrian Economics and Environmentalism
An expert in environmental economics, Dolan attempts to assess the Austrian contribution to this field. He finds it wanting. I must make the same assessment of Dolan. His misunderstanding of Austrian economics is only matched by his mischaracterization of free market environmentalism.
Rothbard’s Time Market and the Demand for Present Goods
This paper defends the Rothbardian theory which states that the proportion of consumption spending relative to investment spending is systematically related to the interest rate through time preference in society,
What Should Austrian Economists Do? On Dolan on the Austrian Paradigm in Environmental Economics
Some scholarship in the Austrian tradition today opens itself to the charge that it is textual exegesis — what did Mises really mean?
Not Enough Bricks: Monetary Misperceptions and the UK Housing Boom
This article analyzes the housing boom witnessed in the UK economy from 1994–2007 in light of the Austrian theory of the business cycle (ABC). Ludwig von Mises’s parable of the “bricks” is utilized to provide empirical
The Austrian Paradigm in Environmental Economics: Theory and Practice
In the introduction to the proceedings of the South Royalton conference, I suggested that Austrian economics had the potential not just to survive but also to achieve what Thomas Kuhn (1962) calls a scientific revolution. Such a revolution would fundamentally change the way practitioners of a field saw the world as a new paradigm came to replace the dominant one. What can we say of the success of Austrian economics in that regard?
Misesian Insights for Modern Macroeconomics
Ludwig von Mises Memorial Lecture from the 2014 Austrian Economics Research Conference presented by J. Huston McCulloch. Ludwig von Mises’s writings contain many insights that are very relevant for mainstream macroeconomics.
Merger Waves and the Austrian Business Cycle Theory
This paper identifies merger waves as parts of Austrian-type business cycles. According to Austrian business cycle theory, when loan rates are reduced below their natural level through bank credit expansion, this falsifies the monetary calculation of capitalist-entrepreneurs, and investments are initiated that calculation showed were not profitable before the interest rate reduction.
Sunk Costs and Contestable Markets
The aim of this paper is twofold: to reformulate the concept of contestable markets in the context of property boundaries and to recapitulate the characteristics of “sunk costs.”
The Savings and Loan Debacle Twenty-Five Years Later: A Misesian Re-Examination and Final Closing of the Book
August 9, 2014 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the signing into law of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act (FIRREA) of 1989 by U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush. FIRREA was enacted to clean up the savings and loan (S&L) financial debacle of the 1980s. In articles, books, symposia, and papers written in the wake of the debacle, popular media and mainstream financial economists each provided explanations of the debacle. This paper analyzes and rejects these explanations in favor of an alternative based on Ludwig von Mises’s observation that market interventions create unintended consequences that usually lead to more interventions that in turn create new waves of unintended and worsening consequences until no more interventions are possible.
