1 - Introduction

Summary

It has now become commonplace to point out that Austrian economics has undergone something of a revival in the past twenty years. Certainly, the number of books and articles that take an Austrian view of some issue or another or that make reference to the views of some well-known Austrian economist have grown dramatically since the early 1970s. There are Austrian graduate programs at two universities, New York University and George Mason University, a Ludwig von Mises Institute at Auburn University, and innumerable undergraduate courses in Austrian economics taught at colleges and universities around the United States. Sessions on Austrian themes at professional meetings always draw a respectably sized crowd, and in a few areas such as banking theory and methodology, Austrian ideas are on the cutting edge of the profession. And since the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the former USSR, there are few economists who have not heard that the Austrians were right after all about the economic impossibility of socialism.

Although the number of self-identified Austrian economists is still quite small as a percentage of the economics profession as a whole, a marked increase in interest in Austrian ideas – even among those who disagree with most of them – cannot be denied. Yet, despite a greater professional presence of Austrian ideas and Austrian economists now, there is still little general understanding as to what Austrian economics is all about.