Mises Search

[This review of Rothbard America’s Great Depression was originally published by the Foundation for Economic Education.] It may not be conventional to review the fifth edition of a book that appears several years after its author’s passing. But  America’s Great Depression  is not a conventional book. It is written with verve and aplomb. And its

The Free Market 17, no. 2 (February 1999)   Creative accounting by the Clinton administration has taken the government’s budgetary imbalances out of the media’s spotlight. But there is no basis for believing that we are entering a new era of fiscal responsibility. Deficits are likely to dominate future decades just as they dominated the past

Students and admirers of Adam Smith will welcome Edwin West’s reappraisal of the relationship between Smith and Cantillon. They have come to expect that each new effort by West will be a treat, and they have come to accept that each will be ever so slightly biased in favor of Smith. West’s readers will not be disappointed with the present treat,

In that Rediff.com item, Sudhir Mulji tells the following story: “That during the period of sustained unemployment Kahn asked Hayek the question: ‘Is it your view that if I went out tomorrow and bought a new overcoat, it would increase unemployment?’ Hayek: ‘Yes, but it would take a very long mathematical argument to explain why.’” This is the

From Chapter Six of David C. Colander’s principles-level Macroeconomics 5th ed., (McGraw Hill, 2004) is titled “Economic Growth, Business Cycles, Unemployment, and Inflation.” Appendix A to this chapter (pp. 157-59) is titled “Nonmainstream Approaches to Macro.” In addition to short introductory and concluding sections, Colander deals with the

This from  an interview with Allan Meltzer published in the current issue of the Minneapolis Fed’s quarterly: “I think Chairman Greenspan does not have some overriding view of the world that he tries to impose on the data. Quite the opposite. He looks at the data, and he tries to figure out what is happening in the world and doesn’t have any very

Clive Granger is best known for his so-called “Granger causality tests.” Christopher Sims was one of the early users of this new statistical technique. He explains its essence in a 1972 AER article: “The method of identifying causal direction employed here [i.e., Granger causality tests] does rest on a sophisticated version of the post hoc ergo

Yesterday, I cited  Granger and Sims for trying to convert a fallacy into a principle by introducing a purportedly more sophisticated version of the fallacy. Today, I accuse Granger and Newbold of abusing the English language, quoting myself from  a 1993 essay : “Only in the early phase of [Granger’s] empirical innovation was it made clear that

In these  recent remarks by Samuel Brittan , Hayek’s rendition of the Austrian theory of the business cycle is dismissed because it entails a “relative contraction” of consumption during the boom. We should note, though, that Mises rendition is different from Hayek’s in this regard: He repeatedly refers to the “malinvestment and overconsumption”

This piece shows that Steven Landsburg needs a better armchair. He writes concerning an increase in the minimum wage: “Sure, you’ve lost your job. But don’t forget, this was a minimum-wage job in the first place.” I’d flunk any Auburn sophomore who wrote this on an exam. Does Landsburg’s statement generalize into a dismissive attitute toward all