History of the Austrian School of Economics

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Ayn Rand's birth. Her books sold in the millions and were most effective in transforming a generation of readers into ardent anti-communists and strong capitalists.

Biographical remarks about Lachmann (1906-1990). Then, Lachmann describes Austrian economics as being subjectivism (individual human action), a certain attitude to time (the future is unknowable), and a distrust of macroeconomic entities (they exist, but Austrians look at macro as mechanistic).

Was George Stigler sympathetic to the Austrian school? Lachmann doesn’t think so because Stigler was a favorite student of Knight. Austrians should have dealt with Keynes, instead they quarreled with Knight.

What policies do Austrians pursue? Those that favor the market.

Recorded at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama; 5-6 February 1999.

A number of writers have, on occasion, claimed to have perceived a con­tradiction in Mises, writes Israel Kirzner. The tension between science and values can, in fact, be resolved.

Professor Mises had come to the United States in 1940 and joined the faculty of the Graduate School in 1945. At that time he had already published his Bureaucracy (1944) and Omnipotent Government (1944) and undoubtedly was laboring on his magnum opus, Human Action (1949) which built on its German-language predecessor Nationalökonomie.

This year's Nobel laureates in economics, writes Frank Shostak, have contributed to further obscuring our understanding of the business cycle.

In his Schlarbaum Laureate address, Hans Sennholz recounts his experiences with Mises as both mentor and friend, he regards this prize as the crowning honor.

Lew Rockwell offers a tribute to Hans Sennholz, the first student in the United States to write a dissertation and receive a PhD under the guidance of Ludwig von Mises.