This article reconstructs the economic dimension of Bruno Leoni’s thought, focusing on a part of his work that has often remained in the background when his legacy is approached primarily through legal and political lenses. Drawing on his essays and reviews in Il Politico, together with Freedom and the Law and later collected papers, the study shows that Leoni engaged in a...
Kenneth Boulding argued that the people and organizations that constitute the war industry hold a special place in economic systems. They blur the line between private and public, and producer and destroyer. At the core of the war industry is the unique military organization, or what Boulding called “milorg,” which includes the entire network of public and private organizations...
James Buchanan and Kenneth Boulding shared the (unique) definition of economics as the science of exchange, and they did so for moral reasons. This paper reconstructs their argument and shows that their understanding of economics (and political economy) as moral science was grounded in the idea that science contributes to the public image of the world. The concept of ‘the image...
This paper investigates the role of family relationships and interactions in developing the skills and strategies necessary for peacefully navigating daily conflicts and contributing to a broader stable peace. Three main activities of family life are identified as contributing factors: developing relational capacities, facilitating learning, and practicing peaceable attitudes and...
This paper reexamines the continued relevance of “consumer sovereignty” as first exposited by William Harold Hutt. As an economist who sat in the seat of Adam Smith, Hutt understood that the driving force of production in the market process is the discovery and satisfaction of consumption ends. The greater is the amount of this satisfaction, the greater is the amount of...
Peter Lewin and Nicolas Cachanosky seek to rehabilitate the concept of the average period of production (APP) introduced into Austrian capital theory by Böhm-Bawerk (1930). In their works, they argue that the financial concepts of Macauley’s Duration and Modified Duration are appropriate measures of the average period of production. For this reason, the most relevant aspects of...
Exchange, division of labor, technology, capital accumulation, and entrepreneurship all contribute to economic growth. In The Economics of Prosperity, Ritenour explains how each of these concepts allow countries to develop and flourish. This book attempts to provide an extensive survey of Austrian literature surrounding development, while still preserving the author’s opinions...
The purpose of this paper is to present “What Should Economists Do?”, an article written by James Buchanan and published in 1964, in an historical perspective. We put forward an important point, namely the opposition with Ludwig von Mises, and Buchanan’s attempt at differentiating his approach from Mises. Instead of in addition to Robbins, that he nominally targeted, Buchanan was...
Cybersecurity is a major U.S. policy issue with a sizable coalition advocating for greater government intervention due to perceived information challenges. Most proposals, however, do not assess whether the prescription actually improves the transmission of relevant knowledge and appropriately channels motivations towards producing socially optimal cybersecurity. In fact...
This review essay of Richard Langlois’s The Corporation and the Twentieth Century (2023) has a threefold purpose. Firstly, I distill one angle of the conceptual framework Langlois employs in his meticulous business history: optimal organizational form is always historically contingent. It depends on costs and benefits of centralization, transaction costs (static and dynamic), and...
The Medieval Constitution of Liberty offers a compelling new argument about the institutional origins of modern economic liberalism. Salter and Young develop the concept of polycentric sovereignty to explain the origins of assemblies (the precursors of parliaments) and free cities. In the process, they synthesize their account with alternative geographic, cultural, and...
Economists usually define capital as a factor of production—roughly speaking, as physical equipment. This paper demonstrates the limits of this common approach and develops a meaningful alternative. In actual business life, capital refers to the monetary value of business assets, regardless of what the assets consist of, and as such, it is an important aspect of economic...
Cybersecurity is a major U.S. policy issue with a sizable coalition asserting that self-regulation is failing, primarily due to rampant low quality security products and a dearth of threat information sharing. State intervention proponents, however, generally disregard the role of cybersecurity entrepreneurial activity in fixing disequilibria. My research identifies how...
What would it truly mean to treat individuals “as real people” when designing public policies? This paper addresses this question by critically assessing the arguments put forth by Mario Rizzo and Glen Whitman’s Escaping Paternalism: Rationality, Behavioral Economics, and Public Policy (2019). Rizzo and Whitman argue that the endeavor of Behavioral Economics to reintroduce...
Epistemic burdens are ubiquitous. Whenever people act, their success largely depends on their knowledge. While epistemic burdens are widely recognised when it comes to centrally planning the economy, Scott Scheall has drawn attention to the epistemic burdens involved in transitioning to a liberal society. In this regard, Scheall raises the question of whether these epistemic...
The term “commons” is used with increasing frequency in the public debate and scientific literature in various fields (including economics and sociology). However, this term is often ambiguous and used to denote quite different things. Obviously, any concept, and therefore also the concept of “commons”, does not have an “essence”. Clear definitions do not serve to capture what...
This paper studies the Berlin rent freeze introduced in 2020 and repealed in 2021. While the so-called Berliner Mietendeckel did lower rents in the regulated segment as intended, it was accompanied by several undesirable consequences, inter alia, less housing offered on the market. I take a dynamic, market process-based approach – relying on Kirzner’s ‘perils of regulation’, and...
This paper examines the short- and long-term effects of lax economic policy in Chile during the COVID-19 pandemic and discusses whether they promoted or inhibited sustainable economic growth and development. The case of Chile is worth studying because it straightforwardly describes the effects of passive and active economic policy on the economy. It is argued that the active or...
What is the relevancy of modern Austrian economics? Austrian economics, from its origins, has attempted to push economics towards greater relevance by developing and refining a methodological approach that enhances the operational validity of its scientific conclusions for decision-making in the real world. In a theoretical paradigm, this led to the development of theoretical...
Menger made wants and goods the center of economic analysis. This paper locates his theory of wants and goods in the history of economic ideas, identifying major influences from the German subjective-value tradition of the 19th century. Our survey of select German economists prior to 1871 – Hufeland, Storch, Rau, Hermann, Mischler, Stein and Schäffle – discovers insights that...
In this paper we contextualize Carl Menger’s work in relation to the transformations of German political economy from the 1860s to the 1890s. We demonstrate that his Grundsätze (1871) was a culmination of the German subjectivist tradition which had started in the early nineteenth century. Menger’s synthesis of this tradition is comparable to Adam Smith’s synthesis of earlier...
The differences on value between Smith and Menger may be other from previously alleged if status is included as a need satisfied only by truly scarce goods. Given our innate desire to distinguish ourselves and be admired, Smith tells us that scarcity is what generates value. So, our desire for distinction is what drives our demand for “diamonds” and gives them value. But when...