Mises Search

[caption id=”attachment_12130” align=”alignright” width=”131”] Rudolf Hilferding[/caption] Paul Krugman isn’t the first economist to project his own faults onto opponents: adversaries of Austrian economics have been doing it since the early days. One lesser-known example is Rudolf Hilferding, a contemporary of Mises and member of the “

Further to Joe Salerno’s post on “ Hayek and the Intellectuals ,” it’s worth adding that Hayek was not alone in thinking of the intellectual class as naturally hostile to the market economy. In particular, there are many similarities between Hayek’s ideas and those found in Schumpeter’s “Sociology of the Intellectuals.” Schumpeter famously argued

IKEA has announced it will be raising the “ minimum wage ” of its US employees to $10.76 per hour, an increase of about 17% from the current minimum. The news comes in the midst of another “national discussion” (often code for anti-economic hysteria) about minimum wage “reform” (always code for an increase). Economic  criticisms  of the public

Peter Klein discusses property rights, privilege, and free markets, in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Burwell v. Hobby Lobby decision.

Although libertarians and Austrian economists have been interested for a long time in the relationship between art and liberty, there’s been relatively little effort to develop a distinctly liberty- or market-oriented form of literary theory; critical theory is a playground for myriad “isms,” but libertarianism isn’t often counted among them.

John Lott writes in Barron’s that we should be sceptical of the populist economics trend that’s been prevalent in the past few years. Specifically, Lott criticizes Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, authors of Freakonomics , for peddling a kind of “naïve economics” that fascinates readers, but doesn’t hold up to serious scrutiny (rather than “naïve

There’s a great story in the news this week about Mike Watts , a British entrepreneur who’s found a creative solution to one of economics’ most clichéd questions: “Who will build the roads?” Ever since a landslide in February, a section of the A431 roadway between Bath and Bristol has been closed to traffic. The closure has been making life very

Beleaguered Malaysian Airlines is opting for a government buyout in the wake of recent disasters. The company is already 69% state-owned, but a new deal will allow the Malaysian government to acquire the remaining shares, completing the nationalization. The airline has been in a downward financial spiral for years, plagued with union difficulties

The phrase “incentives matter” is ubiquitous in economics, from undergraduate teaching to economic policy debates. The mantra is especially popular in the growing literature targeted at the general public, which I’ve criticized before for its undue focus on incentives (see here and here ). My point is that while it’s good to see economic ideas

There’s a long history of comparing market competition to warfare. Game theorists , for example, sometimes use metaphors borrowed from military strategy to talk about competitive decision making, and martial analogies are even more explicit in the popular business literature, where writers often interpret competition using classic strategic