important? • Have they been able to offer proposals of practical value to economic policy, or is their work limited to pure theory? • Do they offer unique solutions to one of the most basic errors in all of social science. Yes, there are libertarian “policies”: those compatible with the non-aggression principle (NAP) and private of the free enterprise system. Here is what Dolan (2014) says about perfect competition: Austrians are quick to condemn neoclassical economists when they slip
beings to create order and reduce uncertainty in exchange” (North 1991, p. 97). 2) Competition is not a state of affairs but a market “process of entrepreneurial that “Austrian economics is a positive discipline that does not say what any given policy or any given law should or should not be” (Zywicki and Stringham, 2017, p.
important? • Have they been able to offer proposals of practical value to economic policy, or is their work limited to pure theory? • Do they offer unique solutions to has been to compare existing market processes with the ideal construct of perfect competition. Finding that the messy realities of the former fall short of the perfect
do arise, such as superior knowledge on the part of a used car dealer, marketplace competition provides a solution, as described above. No such solutions exist in information. Leonetti (2012) writes that prosecutors often will follow a policy of “overcharging,” that is, charging a defendant with multiple crimes for a
features of patent data make it possible to use them to study the efficacy of policies tailored to particular technological areas or specific types of firms, the i.e., that patents can be used as bargaining chips or as means of reducing competition. It is thus well-known that many corporations protect the technology they and the Measurement of Technological Change: A Survey of the Literature.” Research Policy 16: 131–41. Callon, Michel, Jean-Pierre Courtial, and Herve Penan. 1993. La
should remain subject, in the interest of the consumers, to the law of free competition, or “the principles on which economic science is based are invalid” may help economists to avoid the temptation of overuse, especially when discussing policy prescriptions. In 1881, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk attempted an explicit and
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.