Austrian Economics and the Political Economy of Freedom

This work explains and applies the ideas of the Austrian economists to a wide range of contemporary public policy issues. It combines intellectual political-economic history with the modern Austrian theory of the market process to challenge the premises of mainstream neoclassical economics.

This work explains and applies the ideas of the Austrian economists to a wide range of contemporary public policy issues. He combines intellectual political-economic history with the modern Austrian theory of the market process to challenge the premises and uses of mainstream neoclassical economics. He shows the continuities between the positive contributions of the classical economists and the Austrian's in contrast to the neoclassical conceptions of man, the market economy and theory-formation for policy applications. Particular emphasis is given to the Austrian view of the human actor as creative innovator and planner who changes his world to improve his circumstances in comparison to the neoclassical idea of man as a passive economizer within given constraints. The Austrian approach is applied to the problems of the regulated economy, socialist central planning, the welfare state, monetary policy, international trade, and the hundred-year conflict between classical liberalism and collectivism.

How economics became the dismal science - the classical economists and 20th century economics
the significance of Austrian economics in 20th-century economic thought
a rational economist in an irrational age - Ludwig von Mises
economic calculation under socialism - Ludwig von Mises and his predecessors
Ludwig von Mises and the gold standard
liberalism and collectivism in the 20th century
. the political myths and economic realities of the welfare state
the free market and the interventionist state - the political economy of public policy
the limits of economic policy - the Austrian economists and the German Ordo liberals
the global economy and classical liberalism - past, present and future.