Niall Ferguson holds a PhD in philosophy from Oxford, taught history at Harvard and NYU, and wrote perhaps the definitive biography of Henry Kissinger. So, naturally, Bloomberg hired him to write on economics. His most recent column for Bloomberg is a strained mix of the Scot’s views on inflation, tempered slightly by a welcome skepticism toward
Robert Mundell, winner of the Economics Nobel in 1999 , recently passed away at the age of eighty-eight. As many of the obituaries have explained, Mundell is considered the intellectual father of the euro and was associated with the supply-side revolution in economics in the early 1980s. However, in this article I will focus on his earlier,
Jeff Deist: You recently completed a series of articles for the Mises Institute, which we will publish in book form, on how money works today. Why is it important for average people to understand the mechanics of the plumbing of central and commercial banks? Bob Murphy: There’s two main reasons. First, it’s intrinsically interesting. That’s why I
Abstract: This article explains the theoretical importance of the quality of money as a factor of the demand for money and develops the composite indicator that measures the quality of money for the eurozone. The demand for money, i.e., the amount of money people keep in their balances, besides other well-known factors (e.g., interest rate, price
Abstract: This article explains the theoretical importance of the quality of money as a factor of the demand for money and develops the composite indicator that measures the quality of money for the eurozone. The demand for money, i.e., the amount of money people keep in their balances, besides other well-known factors (e.g., interest rate, price
Saturday last, the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, shook the bitcoin world when he announced he would make bitcoin legal tender in his country. The hype after that was unbelievable, as the hodlers went into overdrive. There were some more intelligent takes, as from Caitlin Long on Twitter and Peter St. Onge , but in general the impression
Governments can pay their bills in three ways: taxes, debt, and inflation. The public usually recognizes the first two, for they are difficult to hide. But the third tends to go unnoticed by the public because it involves a slow and subtle reduction in the value of money, a policy usually unarticulated and complex in design. In this article, I
Much has been written about the famous debate between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton over the constitutionality of America’s first central bank, the Bank of the United States (BUS). This was where Jefferson, as secretary of state, enunciated his “strict constructionist” view of the Constitution, making his case to President George
[Excerpted from Human Action, Scholar’s Edition , pp. 423–425] The deliberations of the individuals which determine their conduct with regard to money are based on their knowledge concerning the prices of the immediate past. If they lacked this knowledge, they would not be in a position to decide what the appropriate height of their cash
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. Claims to a definite amount of money, payable and redeemable on demand, against a debtor about whose solvency and willingness to pay there does not prevail the slightest doubt, render to the individual all the services money can render, provided that all parties with whom he could
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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.