Economics

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

by Richard M. Ebeling April 23, 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 ...

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 1

by Richard M. Ebeling March 12, 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 80th Anniversary of F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom

by Richard M. Ebeling February 9, 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 ...

Thomas Nixon Carver on the Economics of Conflict versus Cooperation

by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 2023

Human beings have had two fundamental ways of associating with each other: conflict or cooperation. Both methods have run through all recorded human history, as well as long before human beings left intelligible residues of their actions to be deciphered by those who came after them. Group conflicts have seemed to have a variety of causes: religious, political, linguistic, ...

George Goschen on Laissez-Faire and the Dangers of Government Interference

by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 2023

The counterrevolution against the classical liberalism of the nineteenth century has been at work for more than 150 years. In the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s, the triumph of a philosophy of individual rights and liberty, impartial rule of law, private property, freedom of trade and enterprise domestically and in international relations, and attempts to mitigate, if not end, wars ...

Celebrating Adam Smith on His 300th Birthday

by Richard M. Ebeling June 1, 2023

Three hundred years ago, on June 5, 1723, one of the most important and influential thinkers in modern history, Adam Smith, was born in the small Scottish village of Kirkcaldy. There are few individuals who it can be said have left as lasting and as positive a legacy on humankind as Adam Smith. He authored only two books, The Theory ...

Philip Wicksteed on the Common Sense of Choice and the Market Process

by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 2023

The British economist Philip H. Wicksteed began his most important work, The Common Sense of Political Economy (1910), with a motto taken from the famous German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832): “We all live it, but few of us know what we are living.” Contrary to the classical economists, who had argued that the market value of things was ...

The Life and Significance of F. A. Hayek

by Richard M. Ebeling February 1, 2023

Hayek: A Life, 1899–1950 by Bruce Caldwell and Hansjoerg Klausinger, (University of Chicago Press, 2022) People who knew Friedrich A. Hayek before he won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1974 sometimes said that he went through bouts of depression that interrupted his research and writing. Some also said that he could be aloof and distant when ...