Austrian economics at the cutting edge

Austrian economists today have a valuable opportunity to rejoin the mainstream of the economics profession. As Colander, Holt, and Rosser have argued, neoclassical orthodoxy is no long mainstream. What I call the “heterodox mainstream” is an emerging new orthodoxy. The five leading characteristics of the emerging new orthodoxy are bounded rationality, rule following, institutions, cognition, and evolution. When listed in this order, they suggest the acronym BRICE. The Austrian school is also an example of BRICE economics. The shared themes of BRICE economics create an opportunity for intellectual exchange between Austrians and other elements of the heterodox mainstream. Although Austrians should engage the heterodox mainstream energetically, they should also defend the essential elements of an early version of neoclassical economics, elements at risk of becoming half-forgotten themes of an earlier era. These elements are supply and demand, marginalist logic, opportunity-cost reasoning, and the elementary theory of markets. JEL Codes A14, B50, B53 This text is an edited version of a talk given in Washington, D.C. on 19 November 2005 at the SDAE annual dinner. I thank persons present at that time for a helpful discussion. I also thank William Butos, Roger Garrison, Steven Horwitz, and Peter Lewin for useful comments on an earlier draft.     

Understanding post-communist transitions: the relevance of Austrian economics

The Review of Austrian Economics - The economic literature about the post-communist transition focused primarily on the debate between gradualism and “shock therapy”, and on issues such...     

Emergence and complexity in Austrian economics

Emergence is often argued to be a deep property of complex systems, with such systems exhibiting wholes that are in some way greater than the sum of their parts. These ideas have played an important part in discussions of spontaneous order within Austrian economics, particularly by Hayek drawing on arguments dating from Mill and Menger, although with other traditions such as that of Böhm-Bawerk not relying on such ideas. Philosophical discussions of these terms are considered that raise questions about the relationship between the emergent whole and the lower level parts that comprise it. A major issue is the role of these ideas and processes within evolution, with Hayek in particular moving strongly towards identifying their linkage, something advocated by many non-Austrian economists and non-economists as well.     

The economics of immigration: An Austrian contribution

Any managed migration system will fail to achieve the optimal quantity or mix of immigrants because centrally planning the international labor market suffers from the same epistemic problems that make it impossible to optimally plan any market. In response to the artificial relative price structure, imposed by managed migration systems, the domestic stock of human and physical capital becomes distorted. Managed migration systems also set in motion the dynamics of intervention that lead to further interventions into the economy.     

A history of post-Keynesian economics

John King, in his A History of Post Keynesian Economics Since1936, raises the question of whether there exists a body ofwork which can be called, collectively, post Keynesian. Thispaper presents some criteria for addressing this question, beginningwith the vision and the origins of some of the post-Keynesianideas, leading to an examination of certain features of thevarious groups, including their methodology and their approachesto uncertainty, their pricing theories and their growth theories.It is concluded that, although there is much diversity in thevarious groups, they are reconcilable when seen as referringto different aspects of the economic process and at differinglevels of abstraction.     

Balancing corporate culture: Grid-group and Austrian economics

The aim of this paper is twofold: firstly to discuss the foundations of Grid-Group “Cultural Theory” and highlight the compatibility with Austrian economics, and secondly to apply this framework to the context of organisational culture. My claim is that “Corporate Cultural Theory” provides a rigorous and grounded social anthropological framework to take Austrian economics beyond its traditional uses and improve upon competing explanations of corporate culture.     

The behavioral foundations of Austrian economics

Behavioral and experimental economics present challenges to the neoclassical theory of individual behavior, which is based on individuals making choices within the framework of utility functions that are assumed to have certain well-defined characteristics. Results in behavioral and experimental economics have shown that it is common for individual behavior to systematically deviate from the neoclassical axioms of utility maximization. Austrian economics is also based on axiomatic theories of utility maximization, but the assumptions underlying utility-maximizing behavior are much weaker in the Austrian approach. As a result, they have more solid behavioral foundations and are less subject to challenge by the empirical findings of behavioral and experimental economics. Neoclassical policy conclusions are often overly strong because of its behavioral foundations which are challenged by behavioral and experimental economics and are often misleading because of the comparative static nature of neoclassical welfare economics. For purposes of policy analysis, the Austrian approach provides better insights because of its more realistic behavioral foundations.     

The Austrian roots of the economics of institutions

This paper presents an analysis of the way the Austrian theory of institutions evolved from Menger’s main works. It also tries to advance the idea that the economics of institutions, when it deals with the emergence and evolution of rules and norms from interacting individuals, is inspired by Menger’s work and more generally by the Austrian analysis of the emergence and evolution of institutions. Recent works in the economics of institutions build on this earlier Austrian work to make it more formalized and testable.

Austrian economics and the analysis of labor markets

Theory and policy relating to labor markets is dominated by the mainstream labor market model, although a less well-known, socioeconomic version can also be identified. The mainstream model is methodologically flawed and forced, thereby, to relegate any (serious) investigation of labor market institutions and/or social structures to the margins of its analysis. The socioeconomic account is not so much methodologically flawed, as methodologically ambivalent. While this ambivalence does not actually prevent the investigation of institutions and/or social structures, it does promote ambiguity whenever we inquire into the precise nature of the interaction between them and labor markets. Insights from Austrian economics, when used in collaboration with critical realist methodology, can play a part in augmenting the socioeconomic account, generating a totally new approach to the analysis of labor markets.

Integrating econometrics: A modern undergraduate economics capstone experience

Angrist and Pischke (2017) call for a pedagogical paradigm shift by pointing out that econometrics courses often do not align with modern empirical approaches employed by economists. This article's authors propose a modern capstone experience, designed to address these concerns by integrating econometrics into the traditional capstone approach. They couple a full econometrics course with a traditional capstone course by weaving a cohesive econometrics-heavy research paper through the two courses. They feel this approach addresses the lack of econometrics skills among economics majors while simultaneously making some necessary improvements to undergraduate econometrics content. They hope this article will be a valuable resource for programs changing course requirements or revamping their curriculum to better fit the increasing demand for data analysis skills in the job market.     

Understanding nonprofit social enterprises: Lessons from Austrian economics

There is a large literature on the role of nonprofit enterprises within society. This literature typically views nonprofits as either substitutes for government enterprises or complements to, and even necessary extensions of, these government efforts. While this literature has improved our understanding of the role and importance of nonprofit social enterprises, how social entrepreneurs identify opportunities, allocate resources, and adapt to changing circumstances has been relatively underexplored. Efforts to fill this gap within Austrian economics have categorized nonprofits and identified the limitations of calculation and coordination in the nonprofit sector and the characteristics of successful and unsuccessful nonprofit enterprises. This strand of literature focuses on the differences between economic calculation in for-profit enterprises and decision making in nonprofit enterprises. We argue that another meaningful aspect to determining the ability of nonprofit enterprises to coordinate plans is whether they are structured more like private enterprises and public enterprises. These insights from Austrian economics shed light on why some nonprofits are more effective than others at achieving social goals.

     

The ethics of pure entrepreneurship: An Austrian economics perspective

The Review of Austrian Economics - This paper focuses on the justice of income distribution in a system of private property rights. Milton Friedman argued that the “ethical principle that...     

Behavioural economics: Classical and modern

Abstract

In this paper, the origins and development of behavioural economics, beginning with the pioneering works of Herbert Simon and Ward Edwards, are traced and (critically) discussed. Two kinds of behavioural economics – classical and modern – are attributed, respectively, to the two pioneers. The mathematical foundations of classical behavioural economics are identified, largely, to be in the theory of computation and computational complexity; the mathematical basis for modern behavioural economics is claimed to be a notion of subjective probability. Individually rational economic theories of behaviour, with attempts to broaden – and deepen – the notion of rationality, challenging its orthodox variants, were decisively influenced by these two mathematical underpinnings.