1. Scarcity, Choice, and Value

Introduction to Austrian Economic Analysis

Tags: Austrian Economics Overview, Value and Exchange

06/12/2006 Joseph T. Salerno

In this introduction to the basics of Austrian-school economic analysis, Joseph Salerno introduces a number of basic concepts including utility, exchange, psychic cost, choice, and marginal value. He also introduces a number of important topics such as Crusoe economics and the water-diamond paradox. Salerno lays the foundation for this series of lectures which will cover all the basics of Austrian analysis in more detail.

The first of ten lectures from Joseph Salerno’s Introduction to Austrian Economic Analysis seminar.

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.