In recent decades the public-choice school has been applying economic analysis to political institutions and activities. People are fundamentally the same in government as in private life. In trying to achieve their purposes (which need not be narrowly egoistic ones), individuals respond to opportunities and incentives. The specifics of these are
If you think the free market should be blamed for our current economic woes, you are on the wrong track. Libertarians face charges these days that capitalism has failed or at least that deregulation has invited our current economic troubles. These charges are not persuasive. A more realistic view is that a housing boom and bust happened to
Clear thought and discussion suffer when all sorts of good things, like liberty, equality, fraternity, rights, majority rule, and general welfare — some in tension with others — are marketed together under the portmanteau label “democracy.” Democracy’s core meaning is a particular method of choosing, replacing, and influencing government officials
In the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics of Spring 2000, Robert Tollison joins David Laband in reiterating a stretched conception of market test. Laband and Tollison recommend grading academic performance by the sorts of statistics that Laband compiles, which involve article and page counts, impressions of journal quality, and citations. As
The history that didn’t happen can be just as interesting as the history that did. This article is a small example of its own topic. Except by chance, I wouldn’t now be writing it. Not finding what I wanted while browsing in our library’s magazine aisles, I came across mention of “ uchronie “ in Le Nouvel Observateur . The philosopher Charles
[ The Myth of Democratic Failure: Why Political Institutions Are Efficient • By Donald A. Wittman • Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995 • 240 pages; originally reviewed in Liberty (January 1997)] In recent decades the public-choice school has been applying economic analysis to political institutions and activities. People are
Volume 1, No. 3 (Fall 1998) Ludwig von Mises contributed much to understanding how markets work, of course, but he also showed a keen interest in language. I recall his mentioning, in two or three talks, the advantage for a scholar in economics and history, as he was, to be able to use research materials in more than just one or two languages.
What is the Mises Institute?
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.
