The Entrepreneur

Richard Cantillon is credited with the discovery of economic theory and was the first to fully consider the critical role of entrepreneurship in the economy.

With the failure of central planning, many economists see government as an entrepreneurial institution that fosters efficiency and economic growth,

Volume 6, Number 1 (Fall 1985)

Charles Baird discusses the impact of Government regulation on entrepreneurial discovery.

Peter Klein focuses here on the financial-market entrepreneur — what Rothbard (1962, 1985) calls the capitalist-entrepreneur — to outline some features of an Austrian theory of corporate governance

In the last decades, more and more economists have advanced the idea that significant obstacles impeding economic growth (especially in less developed regions) consist in different market failures,

Much of what is contained within this book has more to do with developing a typology of various non-market institutions than explicitly developing theories of their more complex workings.

Mainstream growth theory focuses on the role of inputs and technology, but inputs and technology cannot produce growth without an environment that fosters entrepreneurship. I believe that the application of mainstream growth theory has often been harmful to economic growth because the mainstream theory ignores the market process.

Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Murray Rothbard were the main architects of the distinctly Austrian theory of production as it exists today. All three conceived the entrepreneurial function 

In the later half of the twentieth century a production function approach to economic growth has led both growth theory and growth policy to conclude that increases in output could best be produced by increasing the inputs into the production process.

The purpose of this paper is to extend Kirzner’s theory by explicitly introducing the role of space in entrepreneurial alertness and the coordination of markets.