Austrian Economics.
Part of the "Critiques of Libertarianism" site.
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html
Last updated 02/18/11.
Austrian Economics is a fringe academic view which is greatly
preferred by many libertarians on ideological grounds. However,
it has even less predictive power than mainstream economics, and
has many commonsense problems.
Links
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NEW 5/09:
Austrian Business Cycle Theory
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John Quiggin provides an excellent overview of ABCT and how it went
badly wrong after its initial promise.
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The Hangover Theory:
Are recessions the inevitable payback for good times?
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Paul Krugman skewers Austrian business cycle theory.
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NEW 5/09:
Parable of the ship: why Austrian Economics fails.
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Austrian economics cannot deal correctly with multicausal problems
because its methodology is innumerate and based on biased moral
assumptions.
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Why I Am Not an Austrian Economist.
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Bryan Caplan's dismissal of Austrian Economics. He's more courteous
than they deserve.
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Myth: The Austrian School of Economics is "apart and above" mainstream economics.
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Explains why Austrianism is pseudoscientific.
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Scrooge Defended.
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Michael Levin's Austrian Economics perspective on Dickens, so
Panglossian and full of stacked assumptions that it is howlingly funny.
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Hayek's Road To Serfdom (a criticism by Walter Block)
Hayek On The Role Of The State: A Radical Libertarian Critique (Radnitzky)
F. A. Hayek On Government And Social Evolution: A Critique (Hoppe)
Socialism: A Property Or Knowledge Problem? (Hoppe)
Hayek: Some Missing Pieces (de Jasay)
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While Hayek is widely claimed as a libertarian and an Austrian
economist, he's not pure enough for these libertarians (who find him
a coercive socialist.) Oh, and of course von Mises is the one, true,
infallible Austrian economist too.
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An Austrian (Mis)Reads Adam Smith: A Critique of Rothbard as
Intellectual Historian
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Peter Hans Matthews and Andreas Ortmann say "Rothbard's book
[Economic Thought Before Adam Smith] suffers from logical flaws,
selective and incomplete textual evidence, a misunderstanding of
Das Adam Smith Problem and the relevant literature..." etc.
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Critics of Austrian Economics
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An outstanding page of criticisms, including luminaries such as
David Friedman, Gordon Tullock, and Robert Nozick.
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For Mises' Sake
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Tom G. Palmer savages Llewellyn Rockwell, the Ludwig von Mises Institute
and Hans-Hermann Hoppe for Austrianism above and beyond the call of
sanity.
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NEW 10/06:
The Social Welfare State, beyond Ideology
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Jeffry Sachs'
Scientific American
article on how social welfare states do as well as or better than
low-tax, high-income countries. The punch line is that Friedrich Von
Hayek was wrong.
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NEW 11/06:
Critics of Austrian Economics
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Against Politics'
index of books and articles criticizing Austrian Economics.
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NEW 2/08:
Some Capital-Theoretic Fallacies of Austrian Economics
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Robert Vienneau attacks assumptions of Austrian Business Cycle Theory.
Highly technical.
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NEW 4/08:
Information and Economics: A Critique of Hayek
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Outlines Hayek's false assumptions, and points out problems of market
capitalist economic miscalculation.
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NEW 6/08:
Who's Afraid of Friedrich Hayek? The Obvious Truths and Mystical Fallacies of a Hero of the Right
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Jesse Larner gives Hayek his due on planned economies and information,
but then roundly criticizes Hayek's numerous failures.
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NEW 9/10:
An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought
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Tony Endres' scathing review of Rothbard's magnum opus.
"Rothbard has produced two volumes which are highly jaundiced
and purblind." From History of
Economics Review.
Print References
The links here are to
Amazon.com, through their associates program, primarily because of the
review information. Books without links are generally out of print,
and can often be easily found at
AddAll Used and Out Of Print Search.
Good sites for bargain shopping for sometimes expensive new books are
Online Bookstore Price Comparison
and
AddAll Book Search and Price Comparison.
Both of those list applicable coupons. Another is
BookFinder.com.
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Roland Kley
"Hayek's Social and Political Thought"
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Oxford University Press 1994. Shows that Hayek's concept of a spontaneous order
doesn't stand up to scrutiny, undermining a body of theory libertarians often
draw upon to show that free markets work.
Copyright 2007 by Mike Huben ( mhuben@world.std.com ).
This document may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes if it is reproduced in its textual entirety, with this notice intact.