Public finance is the sub-discipline of economics that deals with taxes, fiscal policy and government enterprise in general. In order to assess the case in behalf of taxation commonly made in this field, I shall analyze the public finance textbooks of ATKINSON and STIGLITZ (1980), DUE [1963],...

In virtually all economic sub-disciplines, practitioners of the dismal science are exceedingly desirous of avoiding normative concerns, at least in principle. These are seen, and rightly so, as extremely treacherous. Being only human, they do sometimes stray off the path of positive analysis;...

This paper posits that the government is indistinguishable from a robber gang except for the fact that it enjoys exceedingly good public relations (supplied to it, symbiotically, by the intellectual classes) and thus legitimacy. The paper attempts to see beyond this superficiality. and thus to...

The present paper attempts to trace out the implications of the libertarian philosophy for the proper relationship between an inhabitant of a country, and its unjust government. Part I of this paper includes section 2, in which the stage is set for answering this challenging question, section 3,...

This paper looks at trade protectionism in an attempt to determine whether mature economies entering the twenty-first century need to protect their domestic producers from foreign competition. Part I reviews and analyzes the most common arguments that have been offered in support of...

At first glance, there is good and sufficient reason to criticize any attempt to link Ayn Rand and Austrian economics, such as is attempted in the present collection of essays. After all, the school of thought founded by this novelist and philosopher is non-controversially called "Objectivism,"...

In "Why the Austrians Are Wrong About Depressions," Professor Tullock (1987, p. 73) makes some statements that are incorrect and others which, properly interpreted, refute or at least, fail egregiously to support, his thesis that the Austrian theory of the trade cycle is incorrect. We begin by...

Richard Wagner (2000) is an attack on the Austrian business cycle (ABC) theory. Although I shall be defending the latter against the former, I welcome Wagner’s contribution to the debate on the Austrian theory of the business cycle. It provides a good background review, and provides us with an...

Cowen (1997) criticizes Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT) on eight grounds: 1. systematic errors; 2. inflation volatility; 3. confusion of inflation and savings; 4. confusion of inflation and investment; 5. real vs. nominal rates of interest; 6. interest rate information; 7. investor...

The triangle is an integral part of the history of economic thought. It has been used by writers such as Jevons (1871), Taussig (1896), Wicksell (1934, 1969) to illustrate and to help us understand capital theory. Since Hayek (1931) this geometrical figure has been used as a basic pedagogical...