The Marginal Revolutionaries: How Austrian Economists Fought the War of Ideas
Janek Wasserman
New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2019, xiii + 354 pp.
Samuel Bostaph (bostaph@udallas.edu) is emeritus professor of economics at the University of Dallas.
Abstract: Fegley and Israel (2020) have advanced the thesis that the status of leisure as a consumer good is an immediate inference from the action axiom rather than an empirical postulate as maintained by Mises and Rothbard. This comment argues that we can easily imagine a world in which leisure does not represent the opportunity cost of labor, and that Mises and Rothbard have been misconstrued.
Abstract: This paper expands Fuller’s (2013) analysis of the net present value and interest rate changes in the context of the Austrian business cycle theory. During the boom phase of the business cycle, the economy shifts to a more risky position as the result of entrepreneurs’ profit targeting. To quantify this risk the duration, defined as the number of periods that elapse before the average present value dollar is received from a stream of cash flows, can be used.
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It’s one thing for mass democracy to produce bad results, in the form of elected politicians or enacted policies. It’s another when the democratic process itself breaks down because nobody trusts the vote or the people who count it. But that’s precisely where we are.
