Capital and Interest Theory

In a recent paper, Guido Hülsmann (2002) advances the revolutionary idea that Austrian economists ought to base their concept of originary interest on the spread between the value of an end and the value of the means used to achieve the end. He points out that this idea stands in opposition to Ludwig von Mises’s argument that the concept should be based on the assumption of time preference, as presented in Human Action (1966). He also argues that whereas his idea enables one to link originary interest, as he defines it, to market interest, Mises’s idea does not. Hülsmann uses most of his paper to articulate his new idea. The first part of his paper, however, is largely a critique of Mises’s theory.

Volume 17, Number 1 (Spring 1997)

Roger Garrison (2001) provides a welcome diagrammatic exposition of Austrian, capital-based macroeconomics. The exposition attempts to account not only for Austrian business cycles (ABCs), but also for long-run, secular growth.

This paper briefly summarizes Ulrich Fehl’s important contributions to Austrian capital theory. While his work is well known in Europe he remains a relative unknown to the English speaking world. 

Bankruptcy law is a system of interventionary legislation which interferes with the ability of individuals freely to establish the terms of loan co

Peter Lewin’s Capital in Disequilibrium is an award-winning, extensive survey of capital theory, which touches on and summarizes an array of issues and phenomena.

Robert Nozick, in Anarchy, State, and Utopia presented his by-now-famous view that “a minimal state, limited to the narrow functions

In “Government Regulation and Intergenerational Justice,” Rolf Sartorius argues that some government regulation is justified in order t

Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 26 July 2014.

Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 25 July 2014.