Introduction: Assessing Austrian Economics

Austrian economics in its present form dates primarily to the 1970s. Mises (1969) uses the term “Austrian” in a historical sense to refer to the economics of Menger, Wieser, and Böhm-Bawerk. As late as Rothbard’s (1962) Man, Economy, and State, the word “Austrian” appears in quotation marks unless it references specific pre-Misesian economists or particular theories such as the structure of production (e.g., p. 356 vs p. 481). But by the mid-1970s, organizations like the Institute for Humane Studies were organizing events on Austrian economics, so the use of the term to describe a contemporary research program probably begins a few years earlier than that. Around this time, a sufficiently large group of economists explicitly recognized that they found the theoretical framework advanced by scholars like Menger, Mises, and Hayek more compelling and more powerful than the then-dominant Samuelsonian paradigm combining neoclassical price theory with Keynesian macroeconomics. Much early works by self-identified Austrians thus involved bringing concepts from these earlier thinkers into conversation with the economics of their day. They wrestled with then-hot topics such as expectations, macroeconomic fluctuations, and monetary policy, as well as pointing out glaring omissions in mainstream economics such as entrepreneurship, institutions, time, and ignorance (cf. the essays in Dolan, 1976 and Spadaro, 1978). These early contributions have continued to shape the Austrian identity for decades (cf. Beaulier & Subrick, 2013).