Austrian Thinking on International Economics

The epithet “Austrian” in “Austrian economics” is applied to the work of economists as far apart in time as Carl Menger, whose Grundsätze der Volkswirthschaftslehre ( Principles of Political Economy ) first appeared in 1871, and Ludwig Lachmann, Israel Kirzner and Murray Rothbard, writing a century or more later. It would be vain to attempt to define Austrian economics by a set of beliefs, commonly held by its adherents. There is much to be said for following Zuidema (1987), who prefers to speak of “styles” rather than “schools”. This implies that there need be no clear‐cut dividing lines between Austrians and the rest of the economics fraternity and that not all those dubbed “Austrian” are necessarily “typically” Austrian all of the time. There certainly seems to be a style of reasoning that can be seen as specifically Austrian. Some of the components of a “style” mentioned by Zuidema are: