This paper develops a conception of reflexive economic agents as an alternative to the standard utility conception, and explains individual identity in terms of how agents adjust to change in a self-organizing way, an idea developed from Herbert Simon. The paper distinguishes closed equilibrium...

This paper addresses Ludwig von Mises's business cycle theory at maturity, as advanced in his opus magnum Human Action. In this work, Mises embeds the business cycle theory which he initially developed in Theorie des Geldes und der Umlaufmittel into the broad context of his methodological...

This paper explores how a consideration of ontological issues - that is, issues concerned the nature of social reality - informed Elinor Ostrom's analysis of the possibility that local communities can successfully govern common property resources. It is suggested that several ontological issues...

Lionel Robbins's 'An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science' is frequently cited as one of the most influential works on economic methodology of the twentieth century. Yet, paradoxically, Robbins's Essay is also generally acknowledged to have been significantly influenced by...

James M. Buchanan revisited his mentor's famous 1923 essay “The Ethics of Competition” in an essay written for the centenary celebration of Frank Knight's birth in 1985. Buchanan's paper focused on the first section of Knight's essay, and outlined why it provided an inadequate criticism of a...

"Empirical" economists typically have no problem with data-driven, inductive research. But so-called Austrian economists have always objected strenuously on ontological and epistemological grounds that such studies do not produce real knowledge (Mises 1998, 113-115; Mises 2007). Camps of economists...

Nicholas Vriend (2002) asked whether F.A. Hayek was an “ace,” and answered affirmatively. By “ace,” Vriend meant someone who worked with agent-based modeling. To be sure, Hayek could not have worked with agent-based models because that platform did not exist when Hayek was developing his...

This paper offers an immanent critique of Peter Boettke's recent book, 'F.A. Hayek: : Economics, Political Economy and Social Philosophy'. That is to say, it takes some of the goals Boettke sets out to achieve and suggests how they might have been pursued more effectively. Issues addressed...

In the history of economic thought Walter Eucken is mostly known for his impact in establishing the Social Market Economy in post-war Germany. Even though there is a growing interest in his ideas especially from an Austrian and a Constitutional Economics perspective, his influence on the...

This paper examines the question of whether social institutions should be treated as possessing the sui generis causal power to influence people's actions. It does so by means of a case study of the work of the Austrian economist Ludwig Lachmann. Lachmann's account of how social institutions...