Jesús Huerta de Soto

The theory of money, bank credit, and financial markets constitutes the most important theoretical challenge for economic science on the threshold of the twenty-first century. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that, now that the “theoretical gap” represented by the analysis of socialism has been covered, perhaps the least known and, moreover, most significant field is the monetary one. As Friedrich A.

Murray N.

Walter Block

The Debate over Property Rights

The purpose of the present article is to continue my part in the debate over property rights in which I have become enmeshed with Harold Demsetz. It all began with the publication of my piece (Block 1977a), which was critical of Coase (1960) and of Demsetz (1966, 1967). The second round consisted of Demsetz (1979), in which he replied to my critique (Block 1977a).

Nicolai Juul Foss

Marxists have seldom been noted for much economic sophistication in their critique of the capitalist market economy. Marxist reasoning was essentially easy game for Mises ([1920] 1990) in his classic initiation of what came later to be called “the socialist calculation debate.” However, later market socialist contributions to this debate were for a long time believed to have provided the definitive answer to Mises’s challenge.

A line of tension runs through much of James Buchanan’s work on ethics and economics. On the one hand, he views ethics as subjective: he appeals to no external standards that dictate to individuals what they ought to prefer. Thus, he makes no attempt, in the present book, “to say just how much ‘should’ be saved, in the aggregate, despite the proposition that we ‘should’ save more than we do” (p. 35).

Jörg Guido Hülsmann

The literature on free banking has expanded dramatically in the last two decades. A young generation of economists has regained interest in questions of money, banking, and currency that, for a very long time, had disappeared from broad discussion. This renewed interest was partly sparked by poor results from government regulation of the money supply by central banks, as well as other legal devices and restrictions.

Salim Rashid and Abdus Samad

The period between 1836 and 1863 constituted an era of free banking in the history of the United States. During this time, withdrawal of regulations by federal and state governments left the banking industry relatively free. Any person or association of persons could open a bank without legislative charter or permission. The opening of a bank was relatively easy.

Walter Block and Kenneth M. Garschina

Science sinks or swims based on the quality of the distinctions it makes, and social science is no exception to this general rule. It is as important to make accurate differentiations in the history of economic thought as it is in any other branch of this discipline.

Pascal Salin

Microeconomics traditionally splits the consequences of price changes into two different effects: the substitution effect and the income effect.1 The effects are supposed to work in diverging directions. The precise reaction of demand or supply to a relative price change can operate either way.

Anthony de Jasay

Has Hayek a theory of the social order, a comprehensive view of society as a determinate and self-reproducing system, in the same way as Hobbes or Marx, though perhaps no one else can be said to have an (albeit simpler) theory of the social order?