Bettina-Bien Greaves took careful notes during Ludwig von Mises's New York seminars. Whenever he made a comment that suggested research paper or book, she jotted it down on a note card. She kept all these note cards and has generously agreed to share them with the public by sending them to us.
The Mises Institute is pleased to make them public for the first time.
Mises's students followed up on many of the ideas listed here, other topics have been explored in a half-century of economic writing, while many more are left undone. May they inspire the Misesians of this generation to see the Austrian School as a research paradigm that is constantly developing.
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Original notes in PDF
November 9, 1950
- Book suggestion: Need book on evolution of economics from the science of wealth to science of human action. Popular opinion considers economics deals only with potatoes, manufacturing, etc., as an excuse that they don't deal with it. If they knew it was human action, they could not separate various activities of man.
January 11, 1951
- Book suggestion: Existing dictionaries of economics are very bad. Much more difficult to write than a full book.
September 27, 1951
- Book suggestion: Mises "awaits book on economic content of Sherman antitrust laws."
September 27, 1951
- A student finds something unsatisfactory and it forces him to write a book. Two reasons for writing a book:
- If you don't know anything about something, write a book and at the end you will know more.
- You see some light and try to discover it and write it down.
October 11, 1951
- Book suggestion: Is it possible to have a condition where everything is a monopoly? Would it mean a drop in production? Write a book re Communist talk now about "monopolistic capitalism." See Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, and Rudolf Hilferding.
November 8, 1951
- Book or article suggestion: Disappearance of medium size business is not a tendency of an unhampered economy. Good subject for book or article.
April 24, 1952
- Book suggestion: "It would make a good book if someone wants to study whether John Law really believed that such credit as he recommended could make the world richer. Law understood a good bit of economics and monetary theory. After him many sincere men believed it was possible to improve the conditions of mankind by such things — Solvay, etc."
May 15, 1952
- English translation: At University of Leipzig, Professor Pohle criticized many authors — with doctrines like those of the Webbs. Hopes for an English translation.
May 29, 1952
- Book suggestion: Ruritania and U.S. return to gold. Ruritania inflating faster than U.S., causing what is called a "dollar shortage." For Ruritania — stop inflation radically. No credit expansion for business. And U.S. doesn't stop. After some time dollar will increase, but Ruritanian will be rigid. There will be a drop in price of dollar in gold, then a cry of "deflation." Then may exchange the two currencies. Then the job is done.It has happened before. Has nothing to do with debts. Ruritania has balanced budget. Refinance loans at better conditions. France is doing it now. First condition: no more deficits or inflation.
September 9, 1952
- Irving Fisher "an excellent economist, except when it came to money — his approach to money was from the holistic point of view"
October 30, 1952
- "Plans are good for PhD theses — not good for anything else. Good job for a thesis is to analyze a bad plan. This is the chief job of economists — to analyze bad plans."
October 30, 1952
- Some people want to substitute another commodity for gold. Hayek is among those who ask for a new money consisting of other commodities — staples. They want these things to be the money of the future. These commodities should be bought by the government, stored, and the government should issue paper money representing a portion of this total amount. In answer to these arguments, I would say:
- It is an illusion to believe that such a commodity as money would be more stable than gold.
- There would be continual fighting for a change in the choice of commodities.
- What is the meaning of such a dollar bill, which is not easily convertible?
- This means that one wants merely to issue new money based on government subsidies.
- These subjects are wonderful subjects for a doctoral thesis, but they are no good for any other purpose. A PhD thesis should be an analysis of bad plans.
February 26, 1953
- Translation: Dietzel, Heinrich. Die Nationalisierung des Kredits (?) Not translated but should be.
April 30, 1953
- Book suggestion: History of the abolition of free banking
April 30, 1953
- Book suggestion: History of payments in gold and specie
April 30, 1953
- Book suggestion: "There is no book that answers the question, 'What ideas were responsible for the fact that the 19th century liberals did not apply the liberal principles to banking?' This is one of the most important historical problems because this was in fact the problem that brought about the fall of the liberal policies, of capitalism, etc.Liberal policies were discredited in the eyes of the public because there was credit expansion, and then always, after a few years, an economic depression and a crisis…. There was only one book that didn't consider the Currency School as a "school" of ignorant people."
February 18, 1954
- Book suggestion: "It would be interesting to write a book about how the turning point in the crises happened….The Various countries in which credit expansion took place were independent from one another….They all expanded credit but some expanded credit to a greater extent than other countries did….there happened that phenomenon that has been called an 'external drain.' … The central banks realized if this went on they would one day be in a position not to redeem their banknotes and they had to do something about it. The mildest thing they could do was for the president of the Reichsbank to make a speech. He seized some occasion to say, "Speculation goes too far." … On account of this speech, there was an immediate pressure on the banks to lend more money….The scapegoat was the gold standard.
April 14, 1955
- A real history of (economic thought) would have to point out the development of the doctrines and not merely list every book.
September 29, 1955
- Nothing is more useful for the beginning of an economic study than to write a book destroying one of these things (ideas* set forth in "silly publication published everyday … that [will] die even if nobody refutes them"). You need to familiarize yourself with what has already been written and employ one's keenness of mind and critical sense, etc.*fallacious economic theories
November 3, 1955
- Book suggestion: A book might be written, with a theoretical part first and then an analysis of these alleged examples of laws.
- Mentioned previously in this seminar were the following "alleged laws":
- Grimm's or Vemer's (?) law about the change of certain consonants in the Germanic languages. Grimm and Vemer were philologists.
- Pareto's "law of the circulation of the elite."
- Pareto's statistical law concerning the pyramid of income.
December 15, 1955
- Book suggestion: A book — on Say's Law — the distinction between the demand and effective demand.
December 15, 1955
- Report on some of the authors who have written on the so-called "unfavorable balance of payments" -- Haberler and Ohlin
- What do these people say about the unfavorable balance of payments? Where do they stop their analysis? If you don't complete a cycle, there is of course an unfavorable balance of payments. What did this man say about economic problems? Does he repeat? Or does he have some ideas of his own and if so what are these ideas? (Most writers don't say anything that has not been said before and if they say something new it isn't tenable.) Why do these people believe there is an unfavorable balance of trade? How does it develop? Why do these writers deal with nations and not with parts of nations — states, counties, etc.?
(No date given for the following quote — ed.)
- "If we study the history of such cycles in the past, we can discover that in every case there was some instant, some unnecessary accident, that finally brought about the change, the turning point from good business, from the boom, into the depression.I think one would do a very good job, in this so-much-abused field of the historical study of the trade cycles, to compare conditions that brought about this change from good business to bad business in the various trade cycles in the past. What brought it about was mostly the fact that somebody lost their nerves…."
1955-6
- What unions believe about how wages are determined. Unions don't have any economic theory.
- Read:
- Veblen
- German and union literature
- Marx's Value, Price and Profits
- Schmoller Festschrift — contribution on wages.
January 19, 1956
- Book suggestion: Most commendable subjects for a book or books — one or both of his (Pareto's) laws:
- "circulation des elites"
- income curve
- "We need a book to stop econometricians or we will have more econometricians than those in useful occupations."
February 23, 1956
- Translation: Kelsen's book* should be translated. It deals with little known authors. It is a very keen critique of the Marxian "withering away of the state."
- *Sozialismus und Staat: eine Untersuchung der politischen Theorie des Marxismus. Leipzig: C.L. Hirschfeld, 1923; 2nd edition. pp.viii — 208.
February 29, 1956, Mises Interview
- How are prices determined and how government officials think they are determined?
February 29, 1956
- How unions think wages are determined, and how they are actually determined economically-speaking.
February 29, 1956
- All theories of the trade cycle, except the monetary theory, are Marxian. Analyze them, one by one, and show how they are derived from Marxist ideas.
March 1, 1956
- Does each civilization have its special character? Its special world view, mental and spiritual soul?
- What is the character, soul, mentality of each nation?
- How does civilization decay, disintegrate? This should be studied from the point of view of scientific economics.
March 1, 1956
- Conservatives should study Savigny, leader of the historical school of jurisprudence.
March 8, 1956
March 15, 1956
- "Someone should study the relation between nationalist movements and economics. But this is a lifetime project, bigger than a book."
April 5, 1956
- Mathematical and statistical problems.
April 5, 1956
- History of sociology of knowledge, analysis and critique.
May 3, 1956
- Book suggestion: Ideology, growth of the myth of the land.
May 3, 1956
- Book suggestion: Decay of Rome a/c: Gibbon, Guglielmo Ferrero, Sorel, Sayck (Saik? Sake? Seek?)German who explained the decay of Rome through racial mixture.
May 17, 1956
- Book suggestion: What did the egalitarians and socialists say about the standard of living in the future state? See Bellamy.
May 17, 1956
- Book suggestion: Re "circulation des elite," Pareto's idea. See Paul Bloomfield's Uncommon People: A Study of England's Elite. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1955.
May 31, 1956
- Book suggestion: Evolution of American big business. How it took over, step-by-step, what had been done before in the household — soap, soup, candles, dressmaking, etc.
September 27, 1956
- Book suggestion: Anticipation of the future in all kinds of business calculation, including accounting and bookkeeping.
September 27, 1956
- Book suggestion: Confusion between capital and capital goods, especially in the 19th century, and with regard to the concept of social and private capital. This confusion between private and social capital appears even in Boehm Bawerk.
September 27, 1956
- Report suggestion: Income concept of business firm and partners of business firm, contrasted with the concept of income tax legislation and with regard to other people (professions and employees). The government took over something from the feudal lord and the farmer's early accounting to establish "income." Income of profession vs. income of businessman. Income of the author of Gone with the Wind. Surgeons, movie stars, don't have the same privilege as book authors.
- Stability of monetary unit.
September 27, 1956
- Book suggestion: How the development of this state* of accounting up to the beginning of the 18th century influenced the use of the word "income" by the Classical economists and how many generations it took before this concept disappeared. (Israel Kirzner is writing about wealth in a similar way.)
*Traders didn't include the money equivalent of their land, estate, nor of their private household goods, etc…."Capital" included only the amount of goods dedicated to the enterprise of the business. This beginning is responsible for the distinction of the Classical economists between land and capital.
October 4, 1956
- Book suggestion: What about the new national income approach in teaching and explaining economics? Refute the idea of physical productivity of the early subjective economists. Is it possible to impute (ascribe) the result of any activity to the various individuals and various material tools, raw materials, etc., that were employed in its production? For instance, scissors — what part of the cutting belongs to the credit of each blade and also of the man cutting? Physical or economic imputation is different form the moral imputation. Is it possible to figure physical imputation (marginal physical imputation in recent textbooks)? This is preliminary to a discussion of the increase in productivity. How do you bring it about? It seems that the problem of physical productivity has long since been solved. But when you read what people say about productivity of labor, you realize that people don't have the least idea of what brings it about.
October 4, 1956
- Book suggestion: History of attacks on savings. See the Russian, Tugan-Baranowsky, also the German, Lederer at the New School.
October 18, 1956
- Book suggestion: Source of wages — how much was due to labor and how much to capital investments, etc.
October 18, 1956
- Book suggestion: Frontiers of imputation. Re Henry George, land rent, imputation.
October 20, 1956, Meeting of Chamber of Commerce visitors at FEE in Irvington
- History of U.S. — with an introduction dealing with an explanation of the Industrial Revolution in Europe — refuting economic fallacies.
October 25, 1956
- Book suggestion: Re period of falling prices, 1873-1896.
October 25, 1956
- Book suggestion: Re period of falling prices in Great Britain after the Napoleonic Wars.
October 25, 1956
- Book suggestion: Why nobody in Great Britain in 1926 (April 1925?) knew anything about this theoretical problem and about this aspect of the history of his own country? I.e. effects of deflation when England returned to prewar parity of gold for the pound after the Napoleonic Wars.
"If Winston Churchill* had studied history, instead of making it and writing it, he would have known what happened when Great Britain returned to the prewar parity in 1815. The consequences of his acts in 1926** was that he created the situation which led to the policies Keynes tried to justify in his book."
*B. Winston Churchill as Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1924-1929
**England returned to prewar gold parity in April 1925.
November 8, 1956
- Capital shortage is a real factor, while the shortage of investment opportunities is just a fancy of Mr. Keynes….You can expand credit, you cannot expand capital goods. You cannot save the world by the printing press.
November 8, 1956
- Book suggestion: More and more is required of an economist. You must be in a position to tell Congressman Wright Patman why his plans are wrong.
November 15, 1956
- Book suggestion: Point out the essentials of what these writers (of the 1920's and 1930's) said, and explain the difference between the monetary situation then and the situation today.
December 6, 1956
- Book suggestion: What did the countries' governments do in order to make credit expansion technically possible? Legal tender legislation? The .... to free the banks from the obligation of redeeming banknotes, etc.?
January 10, 1957
- Book suggestion: The unpopularity of interest and the consequences.
January 17, 1957
- Article suggestion: Facts that make European trade possible. Germany has protectionism. How could it operate in a free trade world? Steel, coal, iron under European cartel.
January 24, 1957
- Book suggestion: Analyze the idea of the managerial system and the service system and the possibility of operating an economy according to the service system.
Service motive against profit motive….There are people for whom the service motive controls — nurses for contagious diseases, etc. But heads of large corporations operate under profit motives — seldom aware of service motives. He profits most who serves most is opposite of Mises's use of the service principle.
March 7, 1957
- Book suggestion: Ideas of statistical imperialism — Buckle, Quetelet, the school of Comte, etc. They refer to statistics in order to support all round determinism. The ignorant people say that there is something about morals involved in crimes, suicide, etc., but they say it is just a law of nature.
March 7, 1957
- Book suggestion: About sentence in Neumann: There is irregularity; there is ... in the individual cases and only through the law of great numbers does there appear regularity in the total event.
March 14, 1957
- Book suggestion: The method of double-entry bookkeeping didn't refer to real estate. In the 19th century, step-by-step, farming began to use accounting methods. The first step was that only the current operations of the farmers were controlled in this way. Only later was the price and value of the farm itself included.
April 4, 1957
- Book suggestion: Historical evolution of the concept of capital.
April 11, 1957
- Book suggestion: Concept of the numeraire. Study Walras.
April 11, 1957
- Book suggestion: Robber barons.
May 16, 1957
- Book suggestion: How concept of profit as in 18th century Classical economists was dissolved into its components:
- Interest
- Profit
- Management.
September 19, 1957
- Book suggestion: The substitution of the idea of all round monopoly idea for the concentration idea of Marx has never been investigated. Add to this an analysis of monopoly.
September 19, 1957
- Book suggestion: Trend to monopoly (book or doctors dissertation). In the old economists there is little discussion about monopoly which is not a legal monopoly — legal, versus effective market monopoly — but they said little about monopolies that develop without such legal foundation.
September 19, 1957
- MA or PhD thesis suggestion: Post Office must necessarily be a government monopoly. (See history, Prince Metternich, and other with love for freedom.) Black cabinet (associated with Metternich?) — Princes wanted to ship letters at no charge. So they gave monopoly to private letter carriers so that they would make lots of money from their private business and would carry government letters free of charge. There is only an historical explanation of the post office monopoly. Vittorio Torasis (?) became very wealthy.
[No date given, perhaps September 1957? — ed.]
- Report suggestion: Basing point system in steel.
September 26, 1957
- Book suggestion: Austrian legislation to prevent development of shoe and clothing factories. It was a crime for a man who wasn't an artisan to produce something that was reserved to the handicrafts.
September 26, 1957
- Report suggestion: On ridiculous results to which this doctrine (balance of payments) leads.
October 10, 1957
- Book suggestion: Idea of income as developed in tax legislation and association that publishes books on income and wealth.
October 17, 1957
- Book suggestion: History of American cartel legislation.
October 31, 1957
- Analysis of the idea that the technological economics of big scale production are a factor that pushes the economic system toward monopoly and monopoly prices. This idea was developed by the school of Marx. The most dangerous of Marxian students was Keynes.
November 21, 1957
- Analyze objections/explanations of other trade cycle doctrines: Jevons' sunspots, acceleration principle, durable goods doctrine, stupidity doctrine.
January 16, 1958
- Historical study suggestion: History of foreign investments in last 100 years and what happened to them.
January 16, 1958
- Book suggestion: Somebody important makes a speech, cautioning against further credit expansion and saying that the banks must begin to restrict. This speech precipitates the crisis.
January 1958
- PhD thesis suggestion: Futile attempts of John Stuart Mill to save the idea of experience for economic theory. In Mill's opinion, mathematics also was an experimental science based on experience. Locke, down through present day logical positivists, epistemologists and philosophers who know only one source of knowledge — experience — consider the human mind as an empty white sheet on which experience writes its story. You know there was one philosopher who opposed Locke in this connection. In response, Leibniz added, except the mind itself.
February 27, 1958
- Book suggestion: In order to show that research cannot bring about results that people expect, analyze those rare instances in which these epistemologists of the inductive school tell us something more positive, in which they give us some result of their studies. The two laws of Pareto are practically the only instances of attempts to develop laws through a posteriori research:
- Pareto's "law of the circulation of the elites"
- Pareto's law about the pyramid of income distribution….
February 27, 1958
- Book suggestion: A posteriori laws? Fact that one starts mathematical curves, etc., to show deviations from the "normal" shows that there is some kind of a "norm."
February 27, 1958
- Max Weber (1864-1920) once discussed the possibility of a doctor's thesis on the subject of Goethe's teeth — could be interesting from several points of view:
- history of dentistry;
- food and diet of that time;
- effect on the writings of Goethe.
- Perhaps Professor Floyd Zulli in his morning TV lectures (New York Sunrise Semester, 1957-8) would find it helpful.
- The historian chooses the facts in which he is interested. No historian takes all the facts. This would bring about only a model without any interest.
April 17, 1958
- Report suggestion: Mathematical theory of games. Assuming that it is sound, does it have anything to do with economics? Is what is going on in economics a "game"? What is a "game" and is it permissible to compare the economic activities in a market economy or in general with a "game"? Morgenstern, together with the late John von Neumann, wrote the book on the Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, 1944.
May 1, 1958
- Book suggestion: Contempt of theory — people think they are doing something without theory.
May 8, 1958
- MA or PhD thesis suggestion: German experience with potash bonds.
May 8, 1958
- Book Suggestion: Businessmen pay for forecasts because
- they want all available information in order to better judge their own judgment, and
- thousands of big enterprises have departments that tell about the state of the market which will subscribe to the newsletters and economic forecasts. This department is the "library or filing cabinet" for the company. Compare forecasts with what happened.
May 22, 1958, Dinner
- PhD suggestion: People are voting according to what they believe their interests are. Every housewife knows a higher price of bread is worse than a lower price, but on election day they do not know this fact. What is necessary is to find some people in a position to tell these things to voters so they will remember them on election day.
- In Europe, Germans go to Holland, from Aechen, and to Denmark, from Flensburg, for cheaper butter. People say something should be done about this. They say to stop it not just to adjust things so prices are lower in Germany. Good [to know?] how this could come about. How urban populations could so misconstrue this situation on their most important foodstuffs.
December 11, 1958
- Study suggestion: There were interesting beginnings to accounting in ancient Greece and ancient Rome. A study of accounting in the last European Roman Empire would very interesting. There was a mental condition for the development of capital. This mental condition was the system of accounting in double entries, the system that creates the category of capital as different from capital goods. Capital is just a category, an idea, in economic calculation. But it is a possibility merely in a system based on market exchange and money. It is possible to compare the various actions by their monetary effect.
December 11, 1958
- Book suggestion: On development of accounting fro