Volume 4, No. 1 (Spring 2001)
Wagner charges the Austrian business cycle with “obsolescence,” and describes it as “incoherent.” What is the reason for this denunciation? It is obsolete. It cannot be denied that institutions have changed during these seven decades, but to think that this would call for an alteration of a praxeological theory is surely mistaken. No one denies that alternative ways of doing things may or may not make praxeological theories irrelevant, in the sense of not being applicable. But Wagner, in urging his “chaff” thesis, is clearly going beyond these parameters. It is time to bring this discussion to a close. Wagner set out to separate the Austrian wheat from the Austrian chaff, in an attempt to retain the former and jettison the latter. It is difficult to see in what way he has succeeded.
