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Statistics can be interesting and informative, but only if one can properly understand them through sound economic theory.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/inflation-and-statistics-economics-explains-them-not-other-way-around
Statistics can be interesting and informative, but only if one can properly understand them through sound economic theory.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/inflation-and-statistics-economics-explains-them-not-other-way-around
Murray Rothbard's economic perspective changed significantly in 1949 when he met Ludwig von Mises and read his magnum opus, Human Action. With the financial support of the Volker Fund, Rothbard accepted Mises's offer to write a textbook rendition of his treatise. Early on, Rothbard evinced a thorough understanding of Mises's monetary transmission mechanism and praxeological method. This allowed him to further develop the theories of value and price formation the emerging neoclassical synthesis had neglected. In particular, Rothbard used the means-ends relationship to deduce the law of ordinal marginal utility rankings and contrasted it with modern theories of utility. He then showed how this law logically resulted in demand schedules that always sloped downward, which in turn led to a theory of pricing that explained the process of equilibration to the market clearing price. Finally, he extended his analysis to price formation in a monetary economy. In addition to exhibiting his own intellectual progress, Rothbard's developments significantly advanced economic science because Mises assumed these logical deductions but never actually derived them.
Egalitarians assume people would be equal but for oppression or the random hand of luck, and that where injustice can't be shown, luck alone justifies equalizing by force. Joshua Mawhorter turns the presupposition around. Drawing on Rothbard's Egalitarianism: A Revolt Against Nature and Sowell's Discrimination and Disparities, he argues that inequality is the normal condition of a world of scarcity, change, time, and choice; that it is precisely what makes exchange possible; and that the only equality worth defending is equality of liberty under the rule of law.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 25, 2026.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.
Dr. Wanjiru Njoya argues that private property is the indispensable cornerstone of liberty and civilization, and that anti-discrimination laws—however well-intentioned—are a form of aggression against property that nudges society along the continuum toward socialism. Drawing on Rothbard, Hoppe, and Mises, she defends property rights as absolute, carefully distinguishes political philosophy from personal morality, and warns that eroding property will, in Mises's words, cause civilization itself to perish.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 24, 2026.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.
What do Austrians think of equilibrium? Jonathan Newman's answer is "always and never." Rather than treating equilibrium as an unreachable ideal against which real markets are judged failures—the trap Mises warned against—he walks through a realistic market process asking at each step what has been settled and what remains open. That yields several distinct equilibrium constructs: the plane state of rest that occurs after every single exchange (where markets always clear), the Wicksellian state of rest where competitors' prices converge, and the final state of rest that the economy forever tends toward but never reaches. The payload is a quiet demolition of "sticky price" and "sticky wage" reasoning—and with it, the Keynesian account of depressions.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 24, 2026.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.
Wanjiru Njoya applies praxeology to debates about race and discrimination. She starts with Mises on polylogism—the doctrine, shared by Marxists and Nazis alike, that logic itself varies by class or race—and his insistence that reason is common to all human beings. From there she turns to causation: drawing on Nozick, Walter Williams, and Thomas Sowell, she argues that research claiming discrimination causes economic inequality establishes correlation at best, and that unequal outcomes call for no special explanation in the first place.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 22, 2026.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.
Tate Fegley surveys the big ideas of public choice—politics analyzed with the tools of economics—and shows where an Austrian approach sharpens them. Rational ignorance, concentrated benefits and dispersed costs, rent-seeking, the transitional gains trap, budget-maximizing bureaucracies, and the logic of collective action each get a turn, illustrated with sugar tariffs, million-dollar taxi medallions, and Sowell's Benedict Arnold thought experiment. Fegley's throughline: public choice is strongest when it drops the neoclassical assumptions of perfect knowledge and static equilibrium and grounds itself in Austrian subjectivism.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 22, 2026.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.
In the opening lecture of Mises University, Joseph Salerno returns to 1871, when Carl Menger's Principles of Economics launched the Austrian school. Salerno shows how Menger's law of marginal utility solved the ancient "paradox of value"—why life-giving water is cheap and useless diamonds dear—and, in doing so, moved economics away from the classical focus on the businessman and cost, and toward the acting, wanting human being.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 20, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.
A critique of the German “Socialists of the Chair” and their social policy—by way of the Methodenstreit, the clash of control versus economic law, and Max Weber—showing how “social liberalism” abandons liberalism itself.
Austrian economics does not share the same methodology as we see in the economics mainstream. The Austrian emphasis on praxeology provides a better explanation of economic events than does the mathematically-bound mainstream.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/praxeology-within-physics-social-sciences
Austrian economics does not share the same methodology as we see in the economics mainstream. The Austrian emphasis on praxeology provides a better explanation of economic events than does the mathematically-bound mainstream.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/praxeology-within-physics-social-sciences
Mises opens the philosophical half of the course by arguing that Marx's materialism—the claim that a person's economic class shapes his very ideas and logic—dominates modern thought, and he begins to dismantle it.
How Marxism claims that truth itself is attainable only in a classless society, and how the cult of “action” and violence—by way of Georges Sorel and French syndicalism—fed into Leninism, fascism, and Nazi racial doctrine.
The US “celebrates” its 250th birthday today, but not everyone is celebrating. We bring back a classic from 10 years ago that is even more relevant today.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/its-fourth-july-why-am-i-sad
The US “celebrates” its 250th birthday today, but not everyone is celebrating. We bring back a classic from 10 years ago that is even more relevant today.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/its-fourth-july-why-am-i-sad
Bob walks through what Ludwig von Mises wrote about slavery in Human Action, arguing that the institution was not — as the 1619 Project claims — the foundation of American capitalism.Related:Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: Mises.org/HAP556a
Bob walks through what Ludwig von Mises wrote about slavery in Human Action, arguing that the institution was not — as the 1619 Project claims — the foundation of American capitalism.Related:Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: Mises.org/HAP556a
Murray N. Rothbard was a system builder in the mode of Ludwig von Mises, Frank H. Knight, and F. A. Hayek. Social, economic, and political problems are intertwined and complex and require a grand theory to address them. For Rothbard, the unifying theme of social theory was liberty.Original article in The Misesian: https://mises.org/misesian/murray-n-rothbard-toward-science-liberty
Murray N. Rothbard was a system builder in the mode of Ludwig von Mises, Frank H. Knight, and F. A. Hayek. Social, economic, and political problems are intertwined and complex and require a grand theory to address them. For Rothbard, the unifying theme of social theory was liberty.Original article in The Misesian: https://mises.org/misesian/murray-n-rothbard-toward-science-liberty
Dr. Wanjiru Njoya argues that Rothbard's political philosophy is not a sideshow to his economics but its essential second pillar, and that this integrated system is precisely what is needed to challenge the egalitarian premise at its root. Correcting Piketty's spreadsheets isn't enough; the moral case for liberty has to be made explicitly and on philosophical grounds.Recorded in Auburn, Alabama, on May 14, 2026.
Who would join a radical minority movement, and commit him- or herself for life to social obloquy and a marginal existence, for the sake of 20% more bathtubs, or 15% more candy bars? Who will man the barricades either physically or spiritually, for more peanuts or Pepsi?Original article: https://mises.org/articles-interest/duty-natural-outlaws-shut
Who would join a radical minority movement, and commit him- or herself for life to social obloquy and a marginal existence, for the sake of 20% more bathtubs, or 15% more candy bars? Who will man the barricades either physically or spiritually, for more peanuts or Pepsi?Original article: https://mises.org/articles-interest/duty-natural-outlaws-shut
Bob responds to a new working paper from the Geo-chartalism project, which claims to offer a complete theory of the price level by combining insights from Menger, Cantillon, and Warren Mosler. Bob argues that the paper overlooks a crucial prior contribution: Mises' regression theorem, developed in The Theory of Money and Credit, which already solved the circularity problem in monetary theory that the paper claims required Mosler to resolve. Along the way, Bob also explains chartalism, Georgism, and Mises's explanation of the absolute price level.Related:Bob's Paper Critiquing Kevin Carson's Studies in Mutualist Political Economy: Mises.org/HAP548aGeorge Charles, “The Mosler-Cantillon-Menger Synthesis”: Mises.org/HAP548bMMT vs. Austrian School Debate: Mises.org/HAP548cThe Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree
Bob responds to a new working paper from the Geo-chartalism project, which claims to offer a complete theory of the price level by combining insights from Menger, Cantillon, and Warren Mosler. Bob argues that the paper overlooks a crucial prior contribution: Mises' regression theorem, developed in The Theory of Money and Credit, which already solved the circularity problem in monetary theory that the paper claims required Mosler to resolve. Along the way, Bob also explains chartalism, Georgism, and Mises's explanation of the absolute price level.Related:Bob's Paper Critiquing Kevin Carson's Studies in Mutualist Political Economy: Mises.org/HAP548aGeorge Charles, “The Mosler-Cantillon-Menger Synthesis”: Mises.org/HAP548bMMT vs. Austrian School Debate: Mises.org/HAP548cThe Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree
Ryan McMaken looks in detail at an important essay by historian Ralph Raico in which Raico critiques Ludwig von Mises's views on democracy, fascism, and immigration. Raico suggests that Mises's views of democracy and immigration fail to address some real-world problems.Be sure to follow Radio Rothbard at https://Mises.org/RadioRothbardRadio Rothbard mugs are available at the Mises Store. Get yours at https://Mises.org/RothMug PROMO CODE: RothPod for 20% off
Ryan McMaken looks in detail at an important essay by historian Ralph Raico in which Raico critiques Ludwig von Mises's views on democracy, fascism, and immigration. Raico suggests that Mises's views of democracy and immigration fail to address some real-world problems.Be sure to follow Radio Rothbard at https://Mises.org/RadioRothbardRadio Rothbard mugs are available at the Mises Store. Get yours at https://Mises.org/RothMug PROMO CODE: RothPod for 20% off
In this 1960 essay, Murray Rothbard warns critics of scientism not to concede the very term science to positivist methodology. He reclaims scientia as “correct knowledge,” and defends the idea that economics and the social sciences can be rigorously scientific through sound reasoning about purposeful human action, without pretending to be physics.
Professor Joseph Salerno traces how Rothbard's mastery of the praxeological method led him to the controversial but logically airtight conclusion that business cycles have a single, exogenous cause and a single cure.The Murray N. Rothbard Memorial Lecture, sponsored by Steve and Cassandra Torello.The Austrian Economics Research Conference is the international, interdisciplinary meeting of the Austrian school, bringing together leading scholars doing research in this vibrant and influential intellectual tradition.
Professor Lucas Engelhardt examines how mainstream economics has deliberately abandoned the history of economic thought, and why Austrian economists must keep teaching and re-teaching the great debates of the past.The Ludwig von Mises Memorial Lecture, sponsored by Don Printz.The Austrian Economics Research Conference is the international, interdisciplinary meeting of the Austrian school, bringing together leading scholars doing research in this vibrant and influential intellectual tradition.
The Ralph Raico Memorial Lecture, sponsored by Murray and Florence Sabrin. Presented at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama.
In commemoration of Murray Rothbard's 100th birthday, Bob shares five “greatest hits” from Rothbard's economics, covering deficits vs. inflation, monopoly theory, excess capacity, the time structure of production, and his reconstruction of utility and welfare economics.Related:Rothbard, Making Economic Sense: Mises.org/HAP541aRothbard, "Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics": Mises.org/HAP541bRothbard, Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market: Mises.org/HAP541cBob's Study Guide to Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market: Mises.org/HAP541dJoin the Mises Institute on Saturday, April 25 in San Diego, CA to discuss California's fall from grace. Today, it's known for high taxes, bureaucrats, and leftwing billionaires. Is this a warning to the rest of America? Register now at Mises.org/CAHAPThe Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree
In commemoration of Murray Rothbard's 100th birthday, Bob shares five “greatest hits” from Rothbard's economics, covering deficits vs. inflation, monopoly theory, excess capacity, the time structure of production, and his reconstruction of utility and welfare economics.Related:Rothbard, Making Economic Sense: Mises.org/HAP541aRothbard, "Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics": Mises.org/HAP541bRothbard, Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market: Mises.org/HAP541cBob's Study Guide to Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market: Mises.org/HAP541dJoin the Mises Institute on Saturday, April 25 in San Diego, CA to discuss California's fall from grace. Today, it's known for high taxes, bureaucrats, and leftwing billionaires. Is this a warning to the rest of America? Register now at Mises.org/CAHAPThe Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree
Today, the term "Austrian economics" is used to designate two very different paradigms.This essay was originally published in 1993 in the Review of Austrian Economics, Volume 6, Number 2.
The Austrian School of economics isn't a 20th century or even 19th century creation. Instead, Austrian economics is rooted in the logical thought, as developed by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/aristotelian-thomistic-roots-austrian-school
The Austrian School of economics isn't a 20th century or even 19th century creation. Instead, Austrian economics is rooted in the logical thought, as developed by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/aristotelian-thomistic-roots-austrian-school
Elon Musk recently claimed that artificial intelligence will make money itself obsolete. He needs to read the literature of Austrian economics.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/elon-musk-claims-money-will-become-irrelevant-he-right
Elon Musk recently claimed that artificial intelligence will make money itself obsolete. He needs to read the literature of Austrian economics.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/elon-musk-claims-money-will-become-irrelevant-he-right
We must realize that the two most powerful motivations in human history have always been ideology and economic interest, and that a joining of these two motivations can be downright irresistible.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-daily/origins-welfare-state-america
We must realize that the two most powerful motivations in human history have always been ideology and economic interest, and that a joining of these two motivations can be downright irresistible.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-daily/origins-welfare-state-america
Dr. David Gordon explains why the leading philosophical defenses of taxation—from Rawls's difference principle to Nagel & Murphy's “myth of ownership”—collapse, and why natural rights still say taxation is theft.Sponsored by Jane Shaffer, in Memory of Butler Shaffer.Recorded at the Mises Supporters Summit in Delray Beach, Florida, on October 17, 2025.
Since the French Revolution, leftism has served as the impetus for many of the state's worst massacres and totalitarian impulses.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/unique-evil-left
Since the French Revolution, leftism has served as the impetus for many of the state's worst massacres and totalitarian impulses.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/unique-evil-left
Is Hans-Hermann Hoppe a firebrand revolutionary, or something very different? On this episode of Minor Issues, Mark Thornton traces Hoppe's American debut in 1986 and follows the controversies that later made Hoppe a lightning rod. The case here is straightforward: Hoppe isn't a political revolutionary aiming to remake society by seizing state power; he's a natural-rights theorist whose analysis—grounded in property, history, and Austrian economics—argues for social cooperation without a predatory state. Hoppe is an exacting analyst of what works, not an architect of upheaval.Additional ResourcesA Life in Liberty: Liber Amicorum in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, edited by Jörg Guido Hülsmann and Stephan Kinsella (PDF): https://mises.org/MI_135_A Or, purchase the book online: https://mises.org/LiberAmicorum"Understanding the timing and outcome of the Russian Revolution: a public choice approach” (Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice)" by Gregory Dempster, Robert B. Ekelund, Jr., and Mark Thornton: https://mises.org/MI_135_B"Rent Seeking as an Evolving Process: The Case of the Ancien Régime" (Public Choice) by Robert. B. Ekelund, Jr., and Mark Thornton: https://mises.org/MI_135_C"A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism” by Mark Thornton (in Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe): https://mises.org/MI_135_DThe Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at https://mises.org/IssuesFreeBe sure to follow Minor Issues at https://Mises.org/MinorIssues
Mainstream economists claim that they can use econometric models to emulate human action and, thus, create an economic laboratory. These models, however, cannot tell us about cause-and-effect, which is vital to understanding praxeology and economic behavior.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/can-econometric-models-fulfill-role-economic-laboratory
Economist Joseph Salerno, an expert on the Austrian School, money, and methodology, joins us to talk about what makes the Austrian School of economics different. Be sure to follow Radio Rothbard at https://Mises.org/RadioRothbardRadio Rothbard mugs are available at the Mises Store. Get yours at https://Mises.org/RothMug PROMO CODE: RothPod for 20% off
Many "social justice" advocates claim to appeal to a “higher law,” but they usually refuse to acknowledge economic laws because those laws stand in their way of creating the "just" society.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/austrian-perspectives-social-justice
Surveys used to gauge optimism or pessimism about the economy may be interesting to read, but unless they are the product of sound and realistic economic theory, they are not economically useful.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/can-surveys-provide-insight-state-economy
Even when MMT advocates are correct that colonial governments at times burned money after receiving it for tax revenues, they still manage to get both the history and the causes wrong. Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/mmters-love-when-governments-burn-money
Modern psychology has been at odds with the praxeology of the Austrian School, as psychologists have tended to see humans as passive and reactive, while Austrians view human action as purposeful. Recent developments in the field might change that narrative.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/how-psychology-catching-reality-human-action