Volume 2, No. 2 (Summer 1999) In his article “Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth,” Professor Holcombe (1998) argues that Kirznerian entrepreneurial alertness enables market actors to spot previously unnoticed profit opportunities. Entrepreneurs then act upon these opportunities. As a result, the economy becomes more productive because now more
Volume 3, No. 4 (Winter 2000) According to mainstream economics, the validity of various definitions of money can be ascertained by means of a statistical test. What determines whether money M1, M2, and the other Ms are valid definitions is how well they correlate with national income. Most economists hold that, since the early 1980s, correlations
The Free Market 23, no. 8 (August 2003) On May 28 President Bush signed into law a $350 billion package of tax cuts and state aid. Millions of Americans will begin to see the effect of the package within weeks, in the form of bigger paychecks. Also, in July some 25 million families will receive up to $400 per child in tax credits. With more
The Free Market 26, no. 12 (December 2005) On October 24 President Bush nominated Ben S. Bernanke to replace Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. In response, Wall Street became very excited and pushed the Dow Industrial average up by almost 1.7 percent. The media and the pundit class were overjoyed too. Most experts regard
So far in August the differential between the yield on the 10-year Treasury note and the yield on the 3-month Treasury bill stands at 2.38 percent against 2.95 percent in December 2013. Historically, the yield differential on average has led the yearly rate of growth of industrial production by fourteen months. This raises the likelihood that the
Despite all the massive monetary pumping over the past six years and the lowering of interest rates to almost zero most commentators have expressed disappointment with the pace of economic growth. For instance, the yearly rate of growth of the European Monetary Union (EMU) real GDP fell to 0.7 percent in Q2 from 0.9 percent in the previous
Most commentators are of the view that the massive monetary pumping of the Fed during 2008 prevented a major economic disaster. The yearly rate of growth of the Fed’s balance sheet jumped from 3.9 percent in January 2008 to 150.9 percent by December of that year. The federal funds rate target was lowered from 3 percent in January 2008 to 0.25
After closing at 3.03 percent in December 2013, the yield on the 10-year US T-Note has been trending down, closing at 2.34 percent by August this year. Many commentators are puzzled by this, given the optimistic forecasts for economic activity by Fed policy makers. According to mainstream thinking, the central bank is the key factor in determining
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