Business Cycles

What causes an economic downturn? The business press keeps getting it painfully wrong, writes Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

By Gene Callahan, the clearest explanation you may ever read of the Austrian Business Cycle Theory.
 

The president of the United States was ecstatic. Never had economic prospects in this country looked better. Unemployment was at its lowest level in years, the rate of inflation was relatively low, and the economy had grown continuously for almost eight years. No doubt, said the experts, this country was in the midst of a New Economy.

Central banks are papering over problems, says Austrian School financial analyst Frank Shostak.

Paul Krugman is an eminent economist, but he here reveals a woefully inadequate understanding of Austrian business cycle theory. The rudiments of the theory are easy one might have thought that even a Keynesian could grasp them.

An Austrian and a Keynesian spar on business cycle theory. 

How a Keynesian came to wildly distort the Austrian theory. 

With huge segments of the world economy mired in depression, can we conclude that capitalism has failed or that the market behaves irrationally? That seems to be the consensus among many commentators, so we hear a wide range of calls for government intervention to patch things up.

Ed Shanahan on the significance of the Austrian tradition. 

An Austrian explains why Japan cannot shake off its dreadful recession.