George A. Selgin

George Selgin is a Senior Fellow and director of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the Cato Institute. Formerly a professor at the University of Georgia, he has discovered the monetary equivalent of the lost city of Atlantis. He has written a full-scale historical narrative — one that is deeply interesting and engaging — that has been largely unknown, even to scholars of the Industrial Revolution. Send him mail.

Articles

Ludwig von Mises and the Case for Gold

07/20/2005 Articles of Interest George A. Selgin

From the Cato Journal , Vol. 19, No. 2, 1999.

In Defense of Fiduciary Media—or, We are Not Devo(lutionists), We are Misesians!

07/20/2005 Review of Austrian Economics George A. Selgin Lawrence H. White

From The Review of Austrian Economics Vol. 9, No. 2 1996.

100 Percent Reserve Money: The Small Change Challenge

07/30/2014 Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics George A. Selgin

Volume 12, No. 1 (2009) In a free market economy from which fiduciary media are excluded, economic progress will be limited, perhaps severely, by the high cost and correspondingly limited supply of...

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Publications

Good Money

07/14/2008 George A. Selgin

This is the true and remarkable story of private coinage and banking in Britain in the early years of the Industrial Revolution (1775-1850). Making money was a business in demand. The needs of business for small denominations were changing. Merchants

Praxeology and Understanding: An Analysis of the Controversy in Austrian Economics

07/28/1990 George A. Selgin

George Selgin argues that what Mises called praxeology is ultimately rooted in a conception of economic logic that is undeniable and not subject to the claims of those who would extend the idea of “subjectivism” beyond its appropriate bounds

Less than Zero: The Case for a Falling Price Level in a Growing Economy

03/16/1997 George A. Selgin

In several countries, allowing for some positive bias in popular inflation measures, zero inflation itself is now close to being the status quo. That is a great accomplishment in its own right. But its full benefits will not be grasped unless we

Media

George Selgin Critiques MMT and Debates Murphy on Free Banking

09/28/2020 Robert P. Murphy George A. Selgin

Monetary economist George Selgin agrees with Bob on the flaws with MMT, but then the two continue their debate (started at the Soho Forum) on fractional reserve free banking.

The Fed’s Dismal Record

02/28/2010 George A. Selgin

Recorded at Jekyll Island, Georgia; 27 February 2010.

A Century of Failure: Why It’s Time to Consider Replacing the Fed

11/15/2010 George A. Selgin

Recorded at the Mises Circle at Furman University on November 13th, 2010. PPT

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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.

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