What Is Austrian Economics?

The central questions of economics have concerned the greatest thinkers since ancient Greece. And today, economic thinking is broken into many schools of thought: the Keynesians, the Post Keynesians, the New-Keynesians, the Classicals, the New Classicals (or Rational Expectations School), the Monetarists, the Chicago Public Choicers, the Virginia Public Choicers, the Experimentalists, the Game Theorists, the varying branches of Supply Sidism, and on and on it goes.

Also a part of this mix, but in many ways apart from and above it, is the Austrian School. So named because of its historic origins at the University of Vienna, it is not a field within economics, but an alternative way of looking at the entire science. Whereas other schools rely methodologically on idealized mathematical models of the economy, and suggest ways the government can make the world better, Austrian theory is based in the social sciences, and can therefore account for the societal and behavioral elements inherent in economics. Austrians view economics as a tool for understanding how people both cooperate and compete in the process of meeting needs, allocating resources, and discovering ways of building a prosperous social order. Austrians view entrepreneurship as a critical force in economic development, private property as essential to an efficient use of resources, and government intervention in the market process as fundamentally destructive. The Austrian School is quickly growing in popularity today. In academia, this is due to the resurgence of verbal logic as a methodological tool, the search for a theoretically stable tradition in the otherwise incongruity of macroeconomic theorizing, and a backlash against mathematization. In terms of policy, the Austrian School looks more and more attractive, given the "mystery" of ongoing business-cycles, the repeated failures of socialism, and the constant overreach of the regulatory state.

Why Mises Graduate School?

Unrivaled Method. Unrivaled Econ.

Mises Graduate School’s Master of Arts in Austrian Economics degree program is unique. It is the first and only graduate program in the United States dedicated exclusively to the teaching of Austrian economics as conceived by visionary thinkers Dr. Ludwig von Mises and Dr. Murray N. Rothbard. Their collective body of work is more relevant than ever and serves as the foundation of the MGS curriculum. Mises Graduate School empowers students to master these principles and put them to use in their chosen endeavors.

To this end, MGS has carefully selected outstanding faculty with PhDs from prestigious universities, including New York University, UCLA, Columbia University, Cal-Berkeley, Rutgers University, and Virginia Tech. All are accomplished scholars who have lectured or taught at Austrian-centric events, and have published works in their journals, books, or online. Many were personal friends or protégés of Dr. Rothbard.

Thanks to the generosity of donors at the Mises Institute, with whom Mises Graduate School is affiliated, the cost of the program is well below that of other master’s degree programs in economics or the related social sciences, both traditional and online.