Economics

Minimum-Wage Laws Cost Jobs and Threaten Liberty

by Richard M. Ebeling March 12, 2025

One of the great persistent political myths is the illusion that governments have it in their power to manipulate and control the marketplace. One particularly common myth is the widely held belief that government legislation can make things and people worth whatever value those in political authority think they should be worth. The minimum wage is one perverse example of ...

Bidenflation Torpedoed Biden-Harris

by James Bovard February 24, 2025

High inflation spurred Donald Trump’s defeat of Kamala Harris last November. The economy was the top issue for most voters, and inflation was the top economic issue. As Biden’s partner in economic crime, Harris could not escape the blame for the torpedoing of the dollar’s value in recent years. Inflation occurs when the government prints excessive currency, resulting in more ...

50 Years Ago: Hayek’s Nobel Lecture on “The Pretense of Knowledge”

by Richard M. Ebeling January 1, 2025

Fifty years ago, on October 9, 1974, what has become known as the Nobel Prize in Economics was announced for that year in Stockholm, Sweden. It was a joint award to Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal (1898–1987) and Austrian economist Friedrich A. Hayek (1899–1992). Many in the economics profession would not have been particularly surprised by Myrdal being declared a ...

Ludwig von Mises on Human Action and the Free Society

by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 2024

Seventy-five years ago, on September 14, 1949, Yale University Press published Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. Almost 900 pages in length, it soon became recognized as one of the major works in economics in the twentieth century. Not that this recognition was felt in the economics profession of the time. Few reviews appeared in the professional ...

Ludwig von Mises and the Austrian Theory of Money, Banking, and the Business Cycle, Part 3

by Richard M. Ebeling May 5, 2024

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 When the English-language edition of Ludwig von Mises’s The Theory of Money and Credit was published 90 years ago, in 1934, the world was in the midst of the Great Depression. The American stock market crash in October 1929 soon snowballed into a severe economic downtown in 1930 and 1931 ...

Interventionism, Not Capitalism, Has Caused Our Economic Problems

by Richard M. Ebeling April 8, 2024

In a Pew Foundation opinion survey report in September of 2022, it was found that only 46 percent of Democrats had a “positive” view of capitalism, down from 55 percent in 2019. On the other hand, 74 percent of Republicans said they were positive on capitalism, which was a decrease from 78 percent in 2019. At the same time, ...

Ludwig von Mises and the Austrian Theory of Money, Banking, and the Business Cycle, Part 2

by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 2024

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 When the second German-language edition of Ludwig von Mises’s The Theory of Money and Credit appeared 100 years ago, in 1924, it was less than a year since the great German and Austrian inflations had come to an end in 1923. (See my article “The Great German and Austrian Inflations, ...

Ludwig von Mises and the Austrian Theory of Money, Banking, and the Business Cycle, Part 1

by Richard M. Ebeling March 1, 2024

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 One hundred years ago, in 1924, the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises issued a revised German-language edition of his 1912 book Theorie des Geldes und der Unlaufsmittel. Ninety years ago, in 1934, there appeared an English-language edition under the title The Theory ...

The 80th Anniversary of F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom

by Richard M. Ebeling February 1, 2024

Eighty years ago, in March 1944, the British edition of Friedrich A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom was published. An American edition appeared six months later, in September 1944. During these eight decades, Hayek’s book has become a classic work in defense of the liberal free-market society and against socialist central planning. Often, when a book has received the status ...

The Beginnings of a Reborn Austrian School of Economics

by Richard M. Ebeling December 1, 2023

Fifty years ago, on October 10, 1973, one of the leading members of the Austrian School of Economics, Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973), passed away at the age of 92. There was little notice of Mises’s death in the mainstream of the economics profession, even though he had been one of the most widely recognized economists in Europe during the ...

FFF Conference: How Austrian Economics Impacted My Life

by Future of Freedom Foundation November 7, 2023

Join us every Thursday evening at 7 p.m. Eastern time for our upcoming live Zoom conference entitled “How Austrian Economics Impacted My Life.” Each week will feature one of the premier Austrian economists in the world telling his personal story of how he discovered Austrian economics, the impact that it ...

The Austrian Economists and Classical Liberalism

by Richard M. Ebeling November 1, 2023

The Austrian School of Economics has been widely identified with classical-liberal and free-market ideas. This is especially the case in the writings of Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) and Friedrich A. Hayek (1899–1992). But the free-market, liberal orientation of many members of the Austrian School goes back to its founding in 1871 with the publication of Carl Menger’s (1840–1921) Principles ...