Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) was a French economist and journalist. One of his classic works is The Candlemakers' Petition, which uses the reductio ad absurdum philosophical technique to dismantle the arguments the French protectionists put forth to protect French industry in the mid-nineteenth...

This paper provides an overview and discussion of the legal and economic philosophy of Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850), a French political economist. A bibliography with links to other Bastiat studies is also included

Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) was an economist and journalist. A member of the French Liberal School, he is best known for his free trade ideas and his philosophy of law. Mark Blaug ranks him as one of the 100 greatest economists before Keynes. Schumpeter called him a brilliant economic...

Keynes is back. President Obama's economic stimulus package is based on the premise that we can spend our way out of recession. It is an application of the Keynesian multiplier theory, which was expounded in Keynes' 1936 economic treatise, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money....

In studying the development of western freedoms, perhaps no subject is more worthy of discussion than classical liberalism, which the late historian Ralph Raico wrote was “the signature political philosophy of Western Civilization.” Raico defined classical liberalism as “the ideology...

Joseph A. Schumpeter developed a very well-known theory of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship, centred on the concept of "new combinations". According to him, innovation and entrepreneurship are destructive elements driving the system beyond an equilibrium position and setting in motion a...

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...

The paper argues for three points. The first purpose of the paper is to show that Carl Menger would have rejected Ludwig von Mises’ methodological apriorism. Second, I argue that Carl Menger was a pluralist about the methods of theoretical economics and that Mises was rather less of a...

In the first chapter I present my point of view that Menger's theoretical approach may more properly be called relationism, rather than objectivism or subjectivism. In the second chapter I present the thoughts presented in Carl Menger's Principles of Economics in an axiomatic way. The purpose is...

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...