Mises Search

Many media pundits compare the business cycle to a party in which the host (the central bank) takes away the punch bowl (raises interest rates) just as the party (the boom) is really getting underway. The idea is that tight money and credit policies trigger recessions. Ergo, loose or easy credit policy is the way to prevent a recession. In

In a recent article in Forbes , titled “ L is for Layoffs ,” Peter Brimelow and Edwin S. Rubenstein highlight Austrian business cycle theory in their explanation of the current economic crisis. The article favorably quotes Roger Garrison in correctly tracing the cause of the unsustainable boom back to the excessive creation of money and credit,

In a recent op-ed in the New York Times , economist Hal Varian, citing Noble economist Ronald Coase, argues, “What economists call firms . . . are essentially groups of activities for which it is more effective and less costly to use command and control than markets to have things done.” This view of the firm leads him to believe that

As pointed out by Professor Kirzner (2001, pp. 137, 140), Mises did not start out with the intent to develop a theory of the trade cycle. The trade cycle argument first appeared in the last few pages of The Theory of Money and Credit (1912). This early development of Austrian business cycle theory was a direct manifestation of Mises’s rejection of

The current economic conditions in the U.S. compared to the conditions of the period from 1995–2000 have generated, according to Edmund Phelps (” False Hopes for the Economy and False Fears ,” Wall Street Journal , June 3, 2003), two false hopes for the economy and two false fears. But is he justified in his interpretation of these false hopes and

In the Wall Street Journal of March 5, 2009, Daniel Henninger asks “Has Obama Buried Reagan?” While much of the current debate has focused around stimulus and the current crisis, Henninger argues that the correct response to the misguided stimulus and the budget proposal that increases (estimates are based on a very rosy forecast of economic

For much of the world, the period from the 1960s through the early 1980s was an era of ever-greater government intervention into the economy. The period, an expansion of policy built on an intellectual foundation of Marxism, socialism, corporatism, and progressivism culminated in economic stagnation and inflation in the market-oriented

The current crisis has economists, from mainstream defenders of central banking, such as Alan Blinder, to the leading interpreter of Austrian business-cycle theory, Roger Garrison, calling for a reexamination of the role of central banks and money in the economy. Blinder states, “The nature and scope of the Federal Reserve’s authority and the

Randall W. Forsyth, writing for Barron’s early spring 2009, wrote about Austrian economists, “Their ideas warned us of the bubble; their prescription for the bust is too harsh, however.” Now that the NBER has announced that the current “Great Recession” ended in June 2009, after 18 months, let’s reexamine this claim. First, the end date clearly

Complete with an extensive new preface, the republication of Larry Sechrest’s Free Banking is well-timed. The new preface is an important contribution to the ongoing debate within Austrian circles over banking freedom versus 100 percent–reserve banking. Easier access to the book will be an asset for those wishing to better understand and/or teach