Ludwig Von Mises's Approach to Capital As a Bridge Between
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Economics for Real People
Economics for Real People An Introduction to the Austrian School 2nd Edition Economics for Real People An Introduction to the Austrian School 2nd Edition Gene Callahan Copyright 2002, 2004 by Gene Callahan All rights reserved. Written permission must be secured from the publisher to use or reproduce any part of this book, except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles. Published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, 518 West Magnolia Avenue, Auburn, Alabama 36832-4528. ISBN: 0-945466-41-2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Dedicated to Professor Israel Kirzner, on the occasion of his retirement from economics. My deepest gratitude to my wife, Elen, for her support and forbearance during the many hours it took to complete this book. Special thanks to Lew Rockwell, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, for conceiving of this project, and having enough faith in me to put it in my hands. Thanks to Jonathan Erickson of Dr. Dobb’s Journal for per- mission to use my Dr. Dobb’s online op-eds, “Just What Is Superior Technology?” as the basis for Chapter 16, and “Those Damned Bugs!” as the basis for part of Chapter 14. Thanks to Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Insti- tute for permission to use his phrase, “social justice, rightly understood,” as the title for Part 4 of the book. Thanks to Professor Mario Rizzo for kindly inviting me to attend the NYU Colloquium on Market Institutions and Eco- nomic Processes. Thanks to Robert Murphy of Hillsdale College for his fre- quent collaboration, including on two parts of this book, and for many fruitful discussions. -
FALL 2015 Journal of Austrian Economics
The VOL. 18 | NO. 3 | 294–310 QUArtERLY FALL 2015 JOURNAL of AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS PRAXEOLOGY OF COERCION: CATALLACTICS VS. CRATICS RAHIM TAGHIZADEGAN AND MARC-FELIX Otto ABSTRACT: Ludwig von Mises’s most important legacy is the foundation and analysis of catallactics, i.e. the economics of interpersonal exchange, as a sub-discipline of praxeology, the science of human action. In this paper, based both on Mises’s methodical framework and on insights by Tadeusz Kotarbinski and Max Weber, a “praxeology of coercion,” or, more precisely, an analysis of interpersonal actions involving threats, is developed. Our investigation yields both a reviewed taxonomy of human action and a first analysis of the elements of this theory, which we term cratics. This shall establish the basis for adjacent studies, furthering Mises’s project regarding the science of human action. KEYWORDS: Austrian school, praxeology, catallactics, coercion JEL CLASSIFICATION: B53 Rahim Taghizadegan ([email protected]) is director of the academic research institute Scholarium (scholarium.at) in Vienna, Austria, lecturer at several univer- sities and faculty member at the International Academy of Philosophy in Liech- tenstein. Marc-Felix Otto ([email protected]) is equity partner at the consulting firm The Advisory House in Zurich, Switzerland. Both authors would like to thank the research staff at the Scholarium for their help and input, in particular Johannes Leitner and Andreas M. Kramer. 294 Rahim Taghizadegan and Marc-Felix Otto: Praxeology Of Coercion… 295 INTRODUCTION he Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises intended to re-establish economics on a deductive basis, with the subjective Tvaluations, expectations, and goals of acting humans at the center, following the tradition of the “Austrian School” (see Mises, 1940 and 1962). -
Ludwig Von Mises—A Primer
Ludwig von Mises—a Primer Eamonn Butler CIS Occasional Paper 120 2010 First published in Great Britain in 2010 by The Institute of Economic Affairs 2 Lord North Street Westminster London SW1P 3LB in association with Profi le Books Ltd Copyright © The Institute of Economic Affairs 2010 Published in December 2010 by The Centre for Independent Studies Limited PO Box 92, St Leonards, NSW, 1590 Email: [email protected] Website: www.cis.org.au The views expressed in this publication are, as in all IEA publications, those of the author and not those of the institute (which has no corporate view), its managing trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: Butler, Eamonn. Ludwig von Mises : a primer / Eamonn Butler ; foreword by Steven Baker. 9781864321296 (pbk.) CIS occasional papers ; 120. Von Mises, Ludwig, 1881-1973. Economists--Austria--Biography. Austrian school of economics. Centre for Independent Studies (Australia) 330.157092 ©2010 The Institute of Economic Affairs Cover design by Ryan Acosta Cover image by Briggs from Ludwig von Mises Institute website http://mises.org Printed by Ligare Book Printer Typeset in Adobe Garamond and Frugal Sans Ludwig von Mises – a Primer EAMONN BUTLER The Institute of Economic Affairs CONTENTS The author 9 Foreword by Steven Baker 10 Summary 13 1 Why Mises is important 17 Intellectual contributions 18 2 Life, career and writings 25 Career in Europe and America 25 Writings on economics, political science and method 28 The legacy of -
Mises Research Report
CSSN Research Report 2021:2: The Mises Institute Network and Climate Policy. 9 Findings Policy Briefing July 2021 About the authors October, 2020. CSSN seeks to coordinate, conduct and support peer-reviewed research into the Dieter Plehwe is a Research Fellow at the Center for institutional and cultural dynamics of the political Civil Society Research at the Berlin Social Science conflict over climate change, and assist scholars in Center, Germany. Max Goldenbaum is a Student outreach to policymakers and the public. Assistant of the Center for Civil Society Research at the Berlin Social Science Center, Germany. Archana This report should be cited as: Ramanujam is a Graduate student in Sociology at Brown University, USA .Ruth McKie is a Senior Plehwe, Dieter, Max Goldenbaum, Archana Lecturer in Criminology at De Montfort University, Ramanujam, Ruth McKie, Jose Moreno, Kristoffer UK. Jose Moreno is a Predoctoral Fellow at Pompeu Ekberg, Galen Hall, Lucas Araldi, Jeremy Walker, Fabra University, Spain. Kristoffer Ekberg is a Robert Brulle, Moritz Neujeffski, Nick Graham, and Postdoctoral Historian at Chalmers University, Milan Hrubes. 2021. “The Mises Network and Sweden, Galen Hall is a recent graduate of Brown Climate Policy.” Policy Briefing, The Climate Social University and researcher in the Climate and Science Network. July 2021. Development Lab at Brown University, USA, Lucas https://www.cssn.org/ Araldi is a PhD student in Political Science at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Jeremy Walker is a researcher with the Climate Justice Research Centre at the University of Technology Sydney. Robert Brulle, Visiting Professor of Climate Social Science Network Environment and Society and Director of Research, Climate Social Science Network, Brown University. -
Econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible
A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Bond, Niall Article Eliminating the "social" from "Sozialökonomik" economic sociology_the european electronic newsletter Provided in Cooperation with: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG), Cologne Suggested Citation: Bond, Niall (2006) : Eliminating the "social" from "Sozialökonomik", economic sociology_the european electronic newsletter, ISSN 1871-3351, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG), Cologne, Vol. 7, Iss. 2, pp. 7-14 This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/155862 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. www.econstor.eu Eliminating the “social” from “Sozialökonomik” 7 1 Eliminating the “social” from “Sozialökonomik” Niall Bond early as 1908, Schumpeter had been hostile to the notion Leverhulme Fellow, ISET, of the “social” in economics. -
Economic Calculation and the Limits of Organization
Economic Calculation and the Limits of Organization Peter G. Klein conomists have become increasingly frustrated with the text- book model of the firm. The "firm" of intermediate microeco- Enomics is a production function, a mysterious "black box" whose insides are off-limits to respectable economic theory (relegated instead to the lesser disciplines of management, organization theory, industrial psychology, and the like). Though useful in certain contexts, the textbook model has proven unable to account for a variety of real- world business practices: vertical and lateral integration, geographic and product-line diversification, franchising, long-term commercial contract- ing, transfer pricing, research joint ventures, and many others. As an al- ternative to viewing the firm as a production function, economists are turning to a new body ofliterature that views the firm as anorganization, itself worthy of economic analysis. This emerging literature is the best- developed part of what has come to be called the "new institutional eco- nomics."' The new perspective has deeply enhanced and enriched our un- derstanding of firms and other organizations, such that we can no longer agree with Ronald Coase's 1988 statement that "[wlhy firms exist, what determines the number of firms, what determines what firms do . are not questions of interest to most economists" (Coase 1988a, p. 5).The new theory is not without its critics; Richard Nelson (1991), for example, ob- jects that the new institutional economics tends to downplay discretion- ary differences among firms. Still, the new institutional economics-in particular, agency theory and transaction cost economics-has been *Peter G. Klein is assistant professor of economics at the University of Georgia. -
Authoritarian Neoliberalism: Periodization and Critique Bob Jessop
Authoritarian Neoliberalism: Periodization and Critique Bob Jessop Abstract Neoliberalism is variegated as different types of neoliberalism co-exist in a world market that is organized in the shadow of a neoliberalization process that began with neoliberal regime shifts in the USA and UK. This article provides a periodization of neoliberal regime shifts within this context, starting with their pre-history up to the point of no return and then tracing their roll-back, roll forward, blowback, ‘Third Way’, moments of financial crisis, and crisis of crisis-management phases. It argues that neoliberal regime shits were associated from their pre-history onwards with intertwined authoritarian populist and authoritarian statist discourses and practices. Nonetheless, the intensification and interaction of crisis-tendencies of different kinds in different phases and changing forms of resistance have led to an increasingly authoritarian statist form of neoliberal regime, characterized by a state of permanent austerity that requires increased surveillance and policing to maintain it. This illustrates Nicos Poulantzas’s suggestion in the 1970s that authoritarian statism is becoming the normal form of the capitalist type of state but rests on the intensification of features normally associated with exceptional regimes. This article updates Poulantzas’s argument to an era of finance-dominated accumulation and provides a new characterization of authoritarian neoliberal statism. Introduction Neoliberalism is a chaotic conception that is hard to define, especially if one aims to reveal what unifies specific instances as well as what makes them different. Refocusing attention on neoliberalization shifts the problem but does not solve it: we must still identify the outer limits of the concept and what causes its heterogeneity. -
Solving the Reswitching Paradox in the Sraffian Theory of Capital
Solving the Reswitching Paradox in the Sraffian Theory of Capital By CARLO MILANA+ Birkbeck College, University of London Correspondence: Carlo Milana, Department of Management, Birkbeck College, Malet Street, Bloomsbury, London WC1E 7HX. Email: [email protected] Fourth revision, 27th November 2019 Published in Applied Economics and Finance, Vol. 6, No. 6, November 2019 The possibility of the reswitching of techniques in Piero Sraffa’s intersectoral model, namely the recurring capital-intensive techniques with monotonic changes in the interest rate, is traditionally considered as a paradoxical violation of the assumed convexity of technology putting at stake the viability of the neoclassical theory of production. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that this phenomenon is rationalizable within the neoclassical paradigm. Sectoral interdependencies can give rise to the well-known Wicksell effect, which is the revaluation of capital goods due to changes in relative prices. The reswitching of techniques is, therefore, the result of cost-minimizing technical choices facing returning ranks of relative input prices in full consistency with the pure marginalist theory of factor rewards. The proposed theoretical analysis is applied empirically to revisit various numerical examples presented in the literature. Keywords: Capital theory, Neoclassical theory of production, Real factor-price frontier, Real wage-interest frontier, Reswitching of techniques, Reverse capital deepening, Sraffian critique of economic theory. JEL classification: B12, B13, B51, D33, D57, D61, Q11. 1. Introduction The use of the concept of marginal productivity in Piketty’s (2014) Capital in the Twenty-First Century has provoked a critical debate (including Galbraith, 2014 and Solow, 2014) drawing on the so-called Cambridge controversy of the 1960s and Piero Sraffa’s (1960) canonical book. -
Capitalism and Morality ______
Capitalism and Morality _________________________ “LUDWIG VON MISES ON PROFIT, LOSS, THE ENTREPRENEUR, AND CONSUMER SOVEREIGNTY” G. Stolyarov II The insights of Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) into the function of real-world market processes help explain why, in seeking to serve their own interests, market entrepreneurs must abide by the wishes of consumers. Mises’s idea of consumer sovereignty clarifies the manner in which markets determine what is produced, and his analysis shows profits and losses to be dynamic, disequilibrium phenomena resulting from entrepreneurs’ attempts to adjust economic production to consumer demand. Mises uses his positive economics to refute fallacies concerning profit and loss—including the zero-sum and exploitative views of profit. Mises’s ideas were taken in new directions by Israel M. Kirzner, who originated the idea of entrepreneurial alertness and made a case for the necessity of profits as incentives for using entrepreneurial alertness to maximize consumers’ economic well-being. Capitalists, Entrepreneurs, and Capitalist-Entrepreneurs A discussion of Mises’s view of the market presupposes a classification of the various economic functions of agents in the marketplace. These economic functions can coincide in the same person, but they are distinct roles in the market process. Gains from the production process accrue in the form of payments to laborers who work on the process, capitalists whose capital goods are used in the process, and entrepreneurs who make the decision of what to produce and take the initiative to actually produce and market it. Sometimes the same person can perform all three functions. Mises writes, “The excess of gross receipts over expenditures which the classical economists called profit includes the price for the entrepeneur’s own labor employed in the process of production, interest on the capital invested, and finally entrepreneurial profit proper” (Mises 1949, p. -
Prices and Production and Other Works: F.A
PRICES AND PRODUCTION AND OTHER WORKS: F.A. HAYEK ON MONEY, THE BUSINESS CYCLE, AND THE GOLD STANDARD The Ludwig von Mises Institute thanks Mr. Toby Baxendale for his magnificent sponsorship of the publication of this book. Prices and Production and Other Works: F.A. Hayek on Money, the Business Cycle, and the Gold Standard Preface by Danny Quah Foreword by Toby Baxendale Edited with an Introduction by Joseph T. Salerno Ludwig von Mises Institute Auburn, Alabama Copyright 2008 Ludwig von Mises Institute Hayek photograph on back cover courtesy of The Cambridgeshire Collection, Cambridge Central Library. For information, write the Ludwig von Mises Institute, 518 West Magnolia Avenue, Auburn, Alabama 36832, U.S.A. mises.org. ISBN: 978-1-933550-22-0 Contents Preface by Danny Quah . vii Foreword by Toby Baxendale . .xi Introduction by Joseph T.Salerno . .xv Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle (1933) . 1 Preface by F.A. Hayek . 3 1. The Problem of the Trade Cycle . 9 2. Non-Monetary Theories of the Trade Cycle . 23 3. Monetary Theories of the Trade Cycle . 51 4. The Fundamental Cause of Cyclical Fluctuations . 73 5. Unsettled Problems of Trade Cycle Theory . 105 The “Paradox” of Saving (1929, 1931) . 131 Prices and Production (1931, 1935) . 189 Preface to the Second Edition . 191 Lecture 1: Theories of the Influence of Money on Prices . 197 Lecture 2: The Conditions of Equilibrium between the Production of Consumers’ Goods and the Production of Producers’ Goods . 223 Lecture 3: The Working of the Price Mechanism in the Course of the Credit Cycle . 253 Appendix to Lecture 3: A Note on the History of the Doctrines Developed in the Preceding Lecture . -
The Essential Rothbard
THE ESSENTIAL ROTHBARD THE ESSENTIAL ROTHBARD DAVID GORDON Ludwig von Mises Institute AUBURN, ALABAMA Copyright © 2007 Ludwig von Mises Institute All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any man- ner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews. For information write the Ludwig von Mises Institute, 518 West Magnolia Avenue, Auburn, Alabama 36832 U.S.A.; www.mises.org. ISBN: 10 digit: 1-933550-10-4 ISBN: 13 digit: 978-1-933550-10-7 CONTENTS Introduction . 7 The Early Years—Becoming a Libertarian . 9 Man, Economy, and State: Rothbard’s Treatise on Economic Theory . 14 Power and Market: The Final Part of Rothbard’s Treatise . 22 More Advances in Economic Theory: The Logic of Action . 26 Rothbard on Money: The Vindication of Gold . 36 Austrian Economic History . 41 A Rothbardian View of American History . 55 The Unknown Rothbard: Unpublished Papers . 63 Rothbard’s System of Ethics . 87 Politics in Theory and Practice . 94 Rothbard on Current Economic Issues . 109 Rothbard’s Last Scholarly Triumph . 113 Followers and Influence . 122 Bibliography . 125 Index . 179 5 INTRODUCTION urray N. Rothbard, a scholar of extraordinary range, made major contributions to economics, history, politi- Mcal philosophy, and legal theory. He developed and extended the Austrian economics of Ludwig von Mises, in whose seminar he was a main participant for many years. He established himself as the principal Austrian theorist in the latter half of the twentieth century and applied Austrian analysis to topics such as the Great Depression of 1929 and the history of American bank- ing. -
A Roundabout Approach to Macroeconomics 2
A Roundabout Approach to Macroeconomics 2 another matter. Here, the time element is a debilitating problem: These expectations, if you can call them that, are baseless. The future is shrouded in an impenetrable fog of uncertainty, leaving the current level of investment spending to be determined by unruly psychological factors—Keynes’s infamous “animal spirits.” The resultant circular flow will gush and ebb and even on average may not entail enough flow to fully employ the labor force. The circular-flow framework, exercised in both its short-run and long-run modes, seems to me to be exactly the wrong framework for understanding and dealing with the A Roundabout Approach to Macroeconomics: time element in macroeconomics. Identifying the polar cases of “no problem” and Some Autobiographical Reflections* “debilitating problem” doesn’t get us any closer to a solution to all those intermediate cases lying between the poles. The tell-tale feature that inevitably characterizes this framework has been recognized in recent years by Robert Solow (1997)—namely the Roger W. Garrison** lack of any “real coupling” (Solow’s term) between the short run and the long run. In Solow’s reckoning, the two runs simply divide our discipline’s subject matter into (1) the problem of maintaining full employment of existing resources and (2) the I. Introduction: Setting the Stage determinants of economic growth. “Roundaboutness” is a concept featured in Austrian capital theory. Homely stories A viable alternative to the Keynesian circular flow framework is the Austrian about the bare-handed catching of fish are a prelude to a discussion of the economy’s means-ends framework.