Information,Knowledge and Agency: The Information Theoretic Approach and the Austrians

Both the Information Theoretic Economics and Austrian Economics investigate the impact on market activity of problems of information and knowledge. The conceptions of information and knowledge they employ, however, as well as their respective views on and treatment of economic agency, are quite different. The purpose of this paper is to examine these differences, not primarily from an abstract philosophical point of view, but by looking at substantive examples of the economics offered by the two approaches. An attempt is made to explain the Austrian preference for non-formalist approaches to economic analysis.