I received the following question by email: “Why is it that Austrians are remarkably unanimous in their interpretations of economic events as compared to adherents from other schools?”I pose the following to the Austrian community.
- Is this accurate? Are Austrians more unanimous in their interpretations that other economic schools?
- If yes, then why is that?
My own view here. I’m not even sure that the premise of the question is correct. There are many Mises Institute scholars who are basically Rothbardian in their program, so they tend to agree on a lot of things. But the Rothbard’s is not the only view of Austrian Economics.
There are economists with a very different view, such as Professor Reisman, who calls himself an Austro-Classical economist. He has written a treatise incorporating Austrian and Classical economics. There is also the Hayekian wing, which departs from Mises on a number of foundational issues.
Mises laid out his own view of economics as a logical science, called praxeology, that relied on deducing truths that could be known with certainty, based on a few self-evident axioms. So there was an emphasis in Mises‘ program on the logical consistency of the entire framework, while other economic schools of thought may be more of a grab-bag of things that various faculty members who taught at a certain place and time happened to believe, but there is no guarantee of consistency or logical foundations.
