Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk was the student of Carl Menger and the teacher of Ludwig von Mises. Like Menger, he rejected the contention of the Historical School that there were no universally valid laws of economics:
Economic theory, from its very beginnings, has endeavored to discover and formulate the laws governing economic behavior. In the early period, which was under the influence of Rousseau and his doctrines of the laws of nature, it was customary to apply to these economic laws the name and character of physical laws. In a literal sense, this characterization was, of course, open to objection, but possibly the term “physical” or “natural” laws was intended merely to give expression to the fact that, just as natural phenomena are governed by immutable eternal laws, quite independent of human will and human laws, so in the sphere of economics there exist certain laws against which the will of man, and even the powerful will of the state, remain impotent; and that the flow of economic forces cannot, by artificial interference of societal control, be driven out of certain channels into which it is inevitably pressed by the force of economic laws.
In this incisive essay, first published a few months after his passing, in December 1914, he criticizes the claim that the state has the ability to secure a prosperous economy in sovereign disregard of economic laws. FULL ARTICLE
