Mises Search

In September I participated in the amazing Supporters Summit , held at the prestigious National Academy of Sciences in Vienna, where Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk once lectured. After my visit to Austria, I piggybacked an excursion to adjacent Slovakia where I was surprised to discover a large number of fans of the Mises Institute and Ron Paul. Peter

For some time now I have been warning my Austrian readers of the inflationist threat coming, not from the Keynesian camp, but from otherwise free-market Chicago School economists. Some of the leaders in this “quasi-monetarist” or “market-monetarist” school are Scott Sumner , Bill Woolsey , David Beckworth , and Lars Christensen . Their basic

This year in the online Mises Academy I have been leading students through Murray Rothbard’s classic treatise, Man, Economy, and State . (For details on the current class, covering the final third of the book, see here .) In the previous class we covered Rothbard’s analysis of the pricing of land. This is an illuminating topic because it involves

This year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics goes to two Americans, Thomas Sargent (NYU) and Christopher Sims (Princeton). Officially the award is for “their empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy.” There is no doubt that these two guys are really sharp, and free-market economists can find a lot to like in much of the work of

Recently Ben Bernanke caused a stir when he suggested that, in the future, the Fed should play a role in combating asset bubbles. Although his specific ideas are analogous to asking Al Capone to combat organized crime, Bernanke’s suggestion does involve a genuine debate among academic economists: When assessing the tightness or looseness of

Since the crisis began, one of the dominant themes in arguments over proper government policy has been the Keynesian view that it is crucial to prop up total spending. The added twist during this particular recession is the crushing burden of private-sector debt, which allegedly makes it all the more urgent for governments to run fiscal deficits.

Scott Sumner is a Chicago-trained economist who has gained notoriety in recent months for his vigorous advocacy of “NGDP targeting” by the Federal Reserve and other central banks. I have criticized Sumner’s views before, and he and I have agreed to a formal online debate to be held early next year. In the present article, I want to respond to a

The Securities and Exchange Commission took the very drastic step of outlawing the essential financial practice of short selling in an attempt to galvanize financial markets. (The SEC recently extended at least some portions of its initial ban through October 17.) But short selling provides essential information to market participants and helps us

Mark Thornton critiques Thomas Piketty’s recent bestseller, and explains why capitalism is not the problem, nor are taxation and redistribution of wealth the solutions.

There’s a  growing buzz around a “Green New Deal,”  spearheaded by newly-elected Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Although the details are in flux, currently the  draft text  calls for the creation of a 15-member “Select Committee for a Green New Deal” that would “have authority to develop a detailed national, industrial, economic mobilization plan” to