Austrian Economics and the Political Economy of Freedom

Richard M. Ebeling

doi:10.62374/qk3zjd57

Authors

Richard M. Ebeling Foundation for Economic Education

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.62374/qk3zjd57

Keywords:

economic theory, marginal utility, opportunity cost, value and price, capital and interest, markets and competition, money, business cycle, comparative economic systems

Abstract

The revival of the modern Austrian School of economics may be said to have begun 30 years ago. In 1974 the Austrian School had been on hiatus for almost a quarter of a century. For more than 60 years before the 1940s, the Austrian economists had been considered some of the most original contributors to economic theory and policy. They were among the leading developers of the theories of marginal utility, opportunity cost, value and price, capital and interest, markets and competition, money and the business cycle, and comparative economic systems – capitalism versus socialism versus the interventionist welfare state. But the rise and triumph of the Keynesian explanation of and prescription for the Great Depression eclipsed all competing approaches to the problems of economic depression and high unemployment. Despite all that, however, fundamental Austrian insights about man and the market exposed in this article are still corner-stones of a unique Austrian approach which is incompatible with the positivist, historicist, and neoclassical economic views of the world.

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