In this introduction sketch the architecture of Mises' economics and political economy. Mises' overarching program is one of examining exchange (economic science) and the institutions within which exchange takes place (political economy). In recent years the economics profession has moved...

The aim of this article is to investigate the relationship between the praxeology of L. von Mises and the theory of action of Alfred Schütz. Because of the importance that Mises’ theory has had on economics it is interesting to highlight the coincidences and synergies which exist between the...

In this essay, we survey the use of knowledge in economics and argue that knowledge should be treated one way rather than another. In other words, we see our purpose as both positive and normative. First, we want to show how some economists have treated knowledge in their analytical depictions...

We extend the Institutional Possibility Frontier (IPF) — a theoretical framework depicting the institutional trade-offs between the dual costs of dictatorship and disorder (Djankov et al. 2003) — by incorporating the notion of subjective costs. The costs of institutional choice are not...

Most economists assume that markets depend on government to enforce contracts and rules against default or fraud. With small transactions, however, the cost to use the legal system far exceeds the value at stake in a contract, and even with large contracts, the legal system often cannot solve...

In this paper, I challenge Murray Rothbard's interpretation of the School of Salamanca as proto-Austrian. I argue that Scholasticism is in goals and methods profoundly different from any modern school of economics, and that it is mistaken to use the Austrian school as a standard against which...

We argue that in order to answer the challenges that James Buchanan put to contemporary political economists, a reconstruction of public choice theory building on the work of Buchanan, F.A. Hayek and Vincent Ostrom must take place. Absent such a reconstruction, and the significant challenges...

My contention is that political economy as a value-relevant discipline has a legitimate claim on our intellectual attention only to the degree that it is grounded in the value-neutral logic of economic analysis — an analysis that while it cannot determine ultimate values may nevertheless...

Richard Wagner's Mind, Society and Human Action is a brilliant exposition of the implications of pursuing the “open” as opposed to “closed” perspective (what he terms neo-Mengerian orientation in contrast with a neo-Walrasian orientation). The closed model brings tractability, but only...