Austrians gathered at the Southern Economic Association’s annual convention in Atlanta recently. In attendance were several Mises Fellows, Mises Summer Fellows and even graduates of the Mises University.
I organized a session called “Mundane Economics.” The idea behind the session was to use the ordinary tools of economics and hard work to defeat what is often “conventional wisdom.”
Peter Klein’s paper “Universities as Generators of Economic Growth” examined the conventional wisdom and the growing boom in business and technological “incubators” on university campuses. Instead, he found that the value of university patents has generally fallen and that the starting of such incubators has not had noticeable improvement in intellectual property production.
Joseph Salerno explained why mainstream economists like Milton Friedman have had such a dismal record of economic predictions, while the Austrians have had a much better record.
My paper examines why people — including economists — are afraid of truly legalizing drugs: because of a reliance on price theory and a neglect or ignorance of how the market actually works to protect consumers.
Jonathan Newman, a former Mises Summer Fellow, presented his paper on how people under- and over-report their high school grade point averages, and the resulting dangers faced by mainstream economics, who often rely heavily on survey data for answers.
