Reviewed by Roger Arnold

There are numerous well-known definitions of economics, but the one that best captures what economics is about is James Buchanan’s definition, namely: “Economics is the science of markets or exchange institutions.”

Sadly, most economists do not “do economics” with this definition in mind. They “do economics” in the same way that one would imagine an engineer “does engineering.” It is all very mechanical.

Reviewed by Roger Arnold

It is sad that Walter Block had to write this essay. If politicians were less interested in power, if bureaucrats were less interested in meddling in the affairs of the economy, and if the majority of academic economists were less starry-eyed over statistics and more knowledgeable of the way free markets work, then this essay would not have had to have been written. But, alas, the world is what it is, so this essay did have to be written.

Reviewed by Edward H. Kaplan

Readers of von Mises’s Theory and History or Epistemological Problems of Economics will find little to affront their sensibilities in this extended essay by a French historian on what historians ought to and (equally important) ought not to do when they write history. Veyne even cites von Mises and Hayek for some key aspects of his argument. Other aspects, though both plausible and vividly expressed, may leave many historians and economists uneasy.

Reviewed by Edward H. Kaplan

Despite the large claims implied by its subtitle, this is not a theoretical treatise. Nor does it succeed in laying bare the principles of how an economy behaves under normal, that is, nonequilibrium, conditions. That is just as well, since such principles almost certainly cannot be discovered anyway.

Israel M. Kirzner

The thesis of this article is that the celebrated debate over economic calculation under socialism that raged during the interwar period was important for the history of economic thought in a sense not generally appreciated. Not only was the debate an important episode, of course, for its own sake. It was, in addition, I shall claim, important as a catalyst in the development and articulation of the modern Austrian view of the market as a competitive-entrepreneurial process of discovery.

G.A. Selgin

The law of sufficient reason states the minimum amount of connection and order in the world which is necessary if we are to have a chance to understand and control it. . . . Thus [the law asserts] there is not unlimited possibility present in our world. . . . Whatever occurs, a battle, a change in the government or in the economic system, or the like, it is not true that everything or anything else could have happened. . . .

Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Public choice can be defined as the application of economic theory and methodology to the study of politics and political institutions, broadly defined. Neoclassical price theory has been one of the principal tools of the public-choice theorist, having been applied to address such questions as why people vote, why bureaucrats bungle, the effects of deficit finance on government spending, and myriad other questions regarding the operations and activities of governments.

Gordon Tullock

For many years, I have been critical of the Austrian theory of depressions and this led Walter Block to ask me to put my criticisms in print.

David Osterfeld

The Nature of the Free Market

One of the tenets of the Austrian position is that the free market invariably increases “social utility.” If government interferes with the market process, Ludwig von Mises wrote, “it can only impair satisfaction; it can never improve it” (p. 744). The reasoning is as follows.

Jeffrey Herbener

This article illustrates the usefulness of the methodology of the Austrian school of economics. No scientific inquiry can occur without a method, be it carefully considered or willy-nilly. Yet, mainstream economists pay little attention to the methods they use. Apparently they are satisfied to mimic the method of physics.