History of the Austrian School of Economics

A doctrine may be modern, fashionable, generally accepted and nevertheless detrimental to human society, civilization and survival. The first step to every attempt to investigate social, political, and economic changes has to be the study of the changes of the ideas which guided men to bring about these changes. The theories which build up or disintegrate social cooperation can only be proved or refuted by pure reasoning. They cannot be exposed to the simple examination of the experiment.

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.

In a series of posts to an Internet discussion group several years ago, David Friedman severely criticized Murray Rothbard's account of Adam Smith in his Economic Thought Before Adam Smith 

Contrary to Radnitzky's assertion, writes Hans-Hermann Hoppe, it is not difficult to imagine peaceful human cooperation without any collective decision-making.

In this excerpt from his new book, Hans-Hermann Hoppe argues that any form of taxation implies a reduction of income a person can expect to receive from original appropriation, from production, or from contracting.

Bastiat's classic essay in its original English translation. "The law perverted! The law...become the tool of every kind of avarice, instead of being its check!

Claude Frédéric Bastiat (1801 — 1850) is one of the greatest economists ever.

The first chapter of Murray Rothbard's magisterial History of Economic Thought stretches far back in time.

Recorded at Mises University 2005.