Earlier this year, the Swiss central bank joined Denmark and Sweden in implementing negative interest rates. Switzerland’s key bank rate remains at negative 0.75 percent. Bloomberg reported late last month:
The Peronists lost in Argentina after 12 years of populist rule, as voters, in a close election, opted for the economically liberal candidate who, according to USA Today, “promised to reduce the state’s role in the economy and embrace more pro-business policies.” “Pro-business” is most definitely not the same as being “pro-market,” but w
Last Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris has forced the world’s attention away from causes such as the plight of “white privilege” on college campuses and back to the consequences of blowback in the Middle East.
Austrian economics highlights the entrepreneur as the “driving force” of the economy. As a result, Austrian ideas are often at the cutting edge of new research exploring how entrepreneurs and innovators transform the world, and the many problems that result when public policy interferes with their work.
In the wake of the Paris attacks, Europe is being pulled in two directions at once. On the one hand is the rise of localist nationalism in the form of border closings, border fences, and Euroskepticism. On the other hand is the rise of renewed militarism as the French state calls for even more aggressive foreign policy from its European allies in the name of security. In some ways, these two trends appear to be at odds, but they are really just different expressions of nationalism.
ABSTRACT: Ludwig von Mises’s most important legacy is the foundation and analysis of catallactics, i.e., the economics of interpersonal exchange, as a sub-discipline of praxeology, the science of human action.
Originally published in Inquiry, July 1982.
