Last week, a team of researchers under the auspices of the Nuffield Department of Population Health (NDPH) at Oxford University published an article in the online journal Public Library of Science ONE . The article purports to calculate “economically optimal tax levels for 149 world regions that would account for (internalize) the health costs
There are profound methodological differences between the Austrian and Chicago schools that lead to very different characterizations of the nature and function of the market economy. I was recently reminded of this by an article entitled “ The Racist Premium Is Just One Way the Market Punishes Racism ” by Andrew Moran. The point that Moran makes
EcPoFi recaps last year’s development of the True Money Supply (TMS), a monetary aggregate developed by Murray Rothbard and myself in the 1980s. The author of the post points out that in 2014, “the money supply increased by a total of $731 billion, the fourth biggest expansion ever recorded,” although its rate of growth was 7.4%,
The Mercatus Center at George Mason University has just launched the Program on Monetary Policy under the direction of Scott Sumner, Professor of Economics at Bentley University and editor of the influential blog The Money Illusion . Sumner is a leading proponent of the old Friedmanite ”rules-based approach to monetary policy,” wherein
Almost all contemporary economists, except for Austrian economists, persist in analyzing the performance of the market economy using the model of “perfect competition.” Many of these economists go even further and use this hypothetical fictional construct as a normative standard for judging the performance of real-world market economies. They
It appears technology has moved the world one small step closer to a sound money. On Wednesday, a hotel in Abu Dhabi unveiled the GOLD To Go ATM, a gold dispensing vending machine created by a German firm. The machine dispenses 24-carat gold bars in 1, 5, and 10 gram sizes as well as gold coins. A computer inside the machine keeps track of the
As I reported recently, banks are beginning to collaborate in the campaign by governments to stamp out the use of cash among the public. Chase, for example, rolled out a new program in several markets in March that restricts borrowers from using cash for making payments on credit cards, equity lines, mortgages and auto loans. Even more troubling
The policy of the Bernanke-Yellen Fed to whet investors’ appetite for risk by maintaining short-term interest rates at zero in order to pump up investment spending seems to be working quite well. Here is some anecdotal evidence as reported by a friend: I tried tapping private banks for a business loan, for fun, last month, for a business that I
Recently Steve Horwitz has adamantly defended Larry White’s interpretation of Mises’s attitude toward fiduciary media, an interpretation which I have criticized . Steve is surprisingly uncompromising and has even gone as far as to stake Mises’s reputation as a historian of economic thought and monetary theorist on the correctness of White’s
It has always been very difficult to get a read on Masonomics, that is, the style of economics taught at George Mason University, generally under the term “Austrian Economics.” But thanks to Pete Boettke’s prodigious blogging, we learn more and more about it every day. Pete has in the past referred to research at GMU as “a stew of Menger,
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.