The History of a Tradition: Austrian Economics from 1871 to 2016

This paper provides a comprehensive survey of the contributions of the Austrian school of economics, with specific emphasis on post-WWII developments. We provide a brief history and overview of the original theorists of the Austrian school in order to set the stage for the subsequent development of their ideas by Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek. In discussing the main ideas of Mises and Hayek, we focus on how their work provided the foundations for the modern Austrian school, which included Ludwig Lachmann, Murray Rothbard and Israel Kirzner. These scholars contributed to the Austrian revival in the 1960s and 1970s, which, in turn, set the stage for the emergence of the contemporary Austrian school in the 1980s. We review the contemporary development of the Austrian school and, in doing so, discuss the tensions, alternative paths, and the promising future of Austrian economics.

Keywords: Austrian economics, marginal revolution, market process theory, Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek

JEL Classification: B13, B25, B53

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Boettke, Peter J. and Boettke, Peter J. and Coyne, Christopher J. and Newman, Patrick, The History of a Tradition: Austrian Economics from 1871 to 2016 (March 18, 2016). Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Forthcoming, GMU Working Paper in Economics No. 16-18, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2750212