President's Impact Report — First Quarter 2020

Mises.org

In the first quarter of 2020, mises.org had over 4 million unique pageviews, an increase of 26 percent from fourth quarter 2019. With 108,782 pageviews, March 31 was the highest-traffic day for the website in over four years.

The Spanish traffic to mises.org/es continues to grow with 365,691 unique pageviews in the first quarter, up 342 percent from the first quarter of 2019 (365,691 vs. 82,733). Mises.org/es translations comprise 9 percent of all mises.org traffic.

With many of our readers having more time on their hands, the Mises Institute is offering new collections of curated content. Our new series, “Quarantine Chronicles: A Shelter-at-Home-Series,” highlights essays, articles, and clips that may not be as widely known, but will provide a deep understanding of important concepts and history. The three topics offered thus far are: Praxeology, Political Decentralization, and the History of the Austrian School.

Top 5 Most Read Articles on Mises.org for the First Quarter:

“End the Shutdown“ by mises.org editors (85,749 pageviews)
“Markets vs. Socialism: Why South Korean Healthcare Is Outperforming Italy with COVID-19“ by Matthew Tanous (80,848)
“In March, US Deaths from COVID-19 Totaled Less Than 2 Percent of All Deaths“ by Ryan McMaken (68,863)
“The US’s COVID-19 Death Rate Is Far below the Rates in Italy and Spain“ by Ryan McMaken (54,564)
“Police Have No Duty to Protect You, Federal Court Affirms Yet Again“ by Ryan McMaken (43,066)

Media Recognition

Jeff Deist joined guest host Judge Andrew P. Napolitano on Kennedy (on Fox Business Network) to talk about Capitalism vs. Socialism.
Professors Joseph Salerno and Peter Klein were on the Tom Woods Show, Episode 1620 The Economics of the Shutdown to discuss the economics of the Covid-19 lockdowns.
Walter Block’s article “Waiting for organs; Price controls kill sick people,” was featured in Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Ryan McMaken was quoted in the New York Post.
Jeff Deist was published in The Hill, “Against the coronavirus corporate bailout.”
Tho Bishop was published in The Hill, “The ghosts of the Bernanke-Yellen Fed continue to haunt Americans.”
Mark Thornton was interviewed on the Power and Market Report.
Mark Thornton was referenced by Coindesk on Yahoo Finance.
Jeff Deist was interviewed on a variety of podcasts, including the Tom Woods Show, the Ron Paul Liberty Report, and Part of the Problem.
Jeff Deist was interviewed on RT’s The News with Rick Sanchez.
Lew Rockwell was interviewed on the Tom Wood Show and Gold, Goats, ‘N Guns with Tom Loungo.

Introducing our Masters Program

A long-held vision of Ludwig von Mises, Hans F. Sennholz, and Murray N. Rothbard is now a reality.

Ludwig von Mises, with the help of Frederick Nymeyer, sought to realize this vision through the Liberal Institute at the University of Chicago only to learn that, while the university would gladly accept gifts toward creating the Institute, it would allow little or no control of the curriculum by the gift givers.

Hans Sennholz later pursued a similar quest hoping to create the American School of Economics, first through the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and, later, through Grove City College in western Pennsylvania. All to no avail.

Subsequently, Murray Rothbard attempted to sell the idea both to the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and to the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

Their vision? A graduate school of Austrian economics.

Today, the Mises, Sennholz, and Rothbard aspirations are realized as the Mises Institute formally announces its graduate program in Austrian economics with online classes to begin in August 2020. For more information, visit mises.org/edu.

Faculty, Associated Scholars, and More

AERC Research Awards. Awards for the best graduate student papers submitted to the AERC conference committee were made possible through the generosity of Mises Institute Rothbard Society Member Kenneth Garschina.

1st place: Kristoffer Hansen, University of Angers, “Are Free-market Fiduciary Media Possible?”
2nd place: Bernardo Ferrero, King Juan Carlos University, “The Myth of the Developmental State: An Austrian Perspective”
3rd place: Atanacio Hernandez, University of Illinois at Chicago, “Authority and the Natural Right to Punish
4th place: Trieu Nguyen, Hillsdale College, “The Giffen Paradox Revisited”

Mises Senior Fellow Roger Garrison was named as a top economist by “The Best Schools.” He was the only Austrian economist on the list.
David Gordon spoke to students at Occidental College on February 14, about the philosophical foundations of Austrian economics.
Former Mises Research Fellow Peter St. Onge is now a senior economist at the Montreal Economic Institute
Organizing Entrepreneurial Judgment: A New Approach to the Firm authored by Mises Carl Menger Senior Fellow Peter Klein and Mises Associated Scholar Nicolai Foss will be translated into Chinese. Jingjing Wang, a former Mises Research Fellow, was one of two translators.
Mises Senior Fellow Bob Murphy’s Lessons for the Young Economist and the companion Teacher’s Manual is being translated into Chinese. Also Murphy’s series on Understanding Money Mechanics is being translated into Finnish.
Former Mises U student Xiong Tyler Yue has translated Capital and Production by Richard von Strigl and Shanghai University of Finance and Economics Press is going to publish it.
There is now a Portuguese translation of Mises Senior Fellow David Gordon’s An Introduction to Economic Reasoning.
We were contacted by a group of libertarians in Belarus who want to translate some of our articles into Russian for their webpage which is “dedicated to the promotion of the ideas of liberty.”

Mises Media

New Audio

Newly remastered recordings of important lectures, including two 1958 lectures by Ludwig von Mises: The Political Consequences of the Welfare State and The Political Consequences of the Welfare State were made available.
The free audiobook version of Rothbard’s Conceived in Liberty, volume 5 in now available.

Our Top 5 Podcast Episodes of the First Quarter:

“Understanding Money Mechanics“ with Bob Murphy, Human Action Podcast
“Human Action Part One” with David Gordon Human Action Podcast
“Why You Should Read Human Action in 2020“ with Shawn Ritenour, Human Action Podcast
“Why Gold Still Matters“ with Keith Weiner, Human Action Podcast
“Human Action Part Two” with Dr. Robert Murphy” Human Action Podcast

Human Action Podcast

We hope you enjoy this Mises Institute podcast series, focused on Austrian theory in-depth—with the best PhDs discussing core books and core topics. We encourage listeners to look past the white noise and learn—or relearn—real economics. The ultimate goal is introducing more and more people to original sources, from Menger forward.

Top 5 Free PDF Downloads for the First Quarter:

Mises Bookstore

March Kindle sales had the highest royalties since January 2019
Ebook seller on Amazon have increased by 74.24 percent, and on a single day have jumped up by as much as 256 percent.
Top seller on Kindle in March, Henry Hazlitt’s Time Will Run Back: 1,036 copies
Mises Online Store sales increased by 30.69 percent.

Ward and Massey Library

Mr. Carl Watner donated over a hundred titles from his personal library. It is dedicated to voluntaryists past and present whose writings have made the collection possible. Included in the donation is The Collected Works of Lysander Spooner, which has an inscription from Murray Rothbard.

Jane Shaffer is donating many books from the late Butler Shaffer’s wonderful collection. Butler was a Mises Institute Associated Scholar and Club Member.

President’s Impact Report — First Quarter 2020