Hayek's early writings on business-cycle theory and the Great Depression argued that cyclical downturns, including that of 1929-1931 were caused by unsustainable elongations of the capital structure caused by bank-financed investment exceeding voluntary saving. Believing that monetary expansion...

This chapter compares alternative explanations of the Great Depression: the Monetarist explanation of (Friedman and Schwartz,.A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, Princeton University Press, 1963), the Austrian explanation of Hayek and (Robbins,.The Great Depression, Macmillan,...

In den Wirtschaftswissenschaften lassen sich zwei Theorietypen unterscheiden: Die "idealistische Ökonomie" geht von einem Idealzustand aus und untersucht die Bedingungen, unter denen dieser erreicht werden kann wie die Eigenschaften des "homo oeconomicus". Die "realistische Ökonomie" geht vom...