Paolo Sylos Labini's Oligopoly Theory and Technical Progress (1957) is considered one of the major contributions to entry-prevention models, especially after Franco Modigliani's famous formalization. Nonetheless, Modigliani neglected Sylos Labini's major aim when reviewing his work (1958),...

The role of first principles in economics is examined through the lens of dominant methodological approaches of the classical and neoclassical periods. First principles are most clearly displayed in pure deductive systems. The tension between first principles as the basis for deductivist...

Carl Menger's Principles of Economics, published in 1871, is usually regarded as the founding document of the Austrian School of economics. Many of the School's prominent representatives, including Friedrich Wieser, Eugen Böhm-Bawerk, Ludwig Mises, Hans Mayer, Friedrich August Hayek, Fritz...

The interest-rate controversies between Böhm-Bawerk and Fisher have attracted little attention and, in the opinion of most commentators, justifiably so. Böhm-Bawerk and Fisher argue over what appear to be two minor issues – Böhm-Bawerk's claims that his third cause of interest (productivity...

Knut Wicksell's concept of the natural (or neutral) rate of interest, introduced between the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, has played an important role in modern monetary macroeconomics, especially after the development of inflation targeting policy in the 1990s. More...

This paper constitutes the start of a project dedicated to Austrian economist and economic sociologist Friedrich von Wieser (1851-1926). Its central claim is that especially in recent decades, Wieser has become a disproportionately underresearched scholar, and the paper provides a set of...

Little is known about the relationship between Carl Menger, founder of the Austrian School of Economics and one of the three fathers of marginal utility theory, and Karl Menger, whose Vienna Mathematical Colloquium was crucial to the development of mathematical economics. The present paper...

In recent academic and to some extent public debates, mainstream economics has been accused of excessive mathematization. The rejection of mathematical and other formal methods is often cited as a crucial trait of Austrian economics. Based on a systematic discussion of potential benefits and...

Austrian economist Ludwig Mises's central role in the socialist calculation debates has been consensually acknowledged since the early 1920s. Yet, only recently, Nemeth, O'Neill, Uebel, and others have drawn particular attention to Mises's pertinent encounter with one of the most colorful...

Mainstream economics has been running the gauntlet of adverse criticism for decades. These critiques claim as a message of central importance that mainstream economics has lost its relevance as for understanding reality. By making a brief comparison between the methodological strategies of the...