Tag Archives: Sanchez

Why Study Austrian Economics?

Why Austrian? Interview with Higgs

Mises Daily: Wednesday, July 25, 2012 by Robert Higgs

http://mises.org/daily/5614/Why-Austrian-Interview-with-Higgs

10 Reasons Why Austrian Economics Is Better Than Mainstream Economics

By Daniel J. Sanchez

Wednesday, August 8th, 2012

BY JAKUB BOŻYDAR WIŚNIEWSKI (Original Post)

1. Austrian economists make it their priority to make sure that the theorems they formulate are derived from self-evident axioms and constructed according to the proper rules of logical deduction. These considerations are at best of secondary importance to their mainstream colleagues.

2. Austrian economists make it their priority to make sure that the assumptions they base their theorems on are thoroughly realistic, i.e., corresponding to the state of the world as it is. Mainstream economists, on the other hand, admit that their hypotheses are based on deliberately false assumptions.

3. Austrian economists make it their priority to make sure that the theorems they formulate elucidate exact causal connections between economic phenomena, rather than deliberately assuming away their existence or importance by falling back on the physics-inspired notion of mutual determination.

4. The predictive track record of Austrian economists is incomparably superior to that of their mainstream counterparts (see, e.g., here and here).

5. The theorems and conclusions of Austrian economics are perfectly comprehensible to every intelligent layman, which cannot be said about the mathematical puzzles of mainstream economics.

6. In terms of their views on the method and aims of economic theorizing, Austrian economists have a much better claim than their mainstream colleagues to being the heirs and successors of the classical economists, such as Smith, Hume, Say, and Bastiat.

7. Austrian economists never tire of emphasizing the strictly value-free character of their discipline. Thus, unlike their mainstream counterparts, they never presume that the existence of any non-voluntary extra-market institution is justified, and, a fortiori, never make any “public policy recommendations” based on such presumptions. On the contrary, they confine their scholarly research to investigating the logical origins and outcomes of various economic processes and phenomena as they are, not as they would like them to be.

8. Identifying the concept of demonstrated preference as the keystone of economic analysis allows Austrian economists to avoid the twin pitfalls of behaviorism and psychologism, which their mainstream colleagues cannot navigate in any principled and methodologically robust manner.

9. Austrian economists reject academic and professional hyperspecialization in their discipline, thus stressing the holistic, integrated nature of the science of economics. In the words of F. A. Hayek, “the physicist who is only a physicist can still be a first-class physicist and a most valuable member of society. But nobody can be a great economist who is only an economist – and I am even tempted to add that the economist who is only an economist is likely to become a nuisance if not a positive danger”.

10. Austrian economists cannot retreat into the safe haven of epistemological nihilism when the logic of their arguments turns out to be faulty. Mainstream economists, on the other hand, when the facts fail to correspond to their hypotheses, can always claim that “this time things are different”, which is a straightforward implication of the fact that any given set of sufficiently complex empirical data is compatible with a number of mutually exclusive empirical (but not logical) interpretations.

Inflation, Price Controls and Rome; Tweedy Browne, TAVF

My last mention of the Roman Empire, http://wp.me/p1PgpH-vM.

The fall of the Roman Empire ushered in the Dark Ages (Wow! Now THAT is a bear market–an age of fear, despair, fiefdoms, and darkness)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(historiography)

If Only Edward Gibbon Could Have Read Mises

By Daniel J. Sanchez at www.mises.org

Monday, June 4th, 2012

Thanks to Ed Smith for pointing out this passage in the Decline of the Rome Wikipedia article:

Historian Michael Rostovtzeff and economist Ludwig von Mises both argued that unsound economic policies played a key role in the impoverishment and decay of the Roman Empire. According to them, by the 2nd century AD, the Roman Empire had developed a complex market economy in which trade was relatively free. Tariffs were low and laws controlling the prices of foodstuffs and other commodities had little impact because they did not fix the prices significantly below their market levels. After the 3rd century, however, debasement of the currency (i.e., the minting of coins with diminishing content of gold, silver, and bronze) led to inflation. The price control laws then resulted in prices that were significantly below their free-market equilibrium levels. It should, however, be noted that Constantine initiated a successful reform of the currency which was completed before the barbarian invasions of the 4th century, and that thereafter the currency remained sound everywhere that remained within the empire until at least the 11th century – at any rate for gold coins. According to Rostovtzeff and Mises, artificially low prices led to the scarcity of foodstuffs, particularly in cities, whose inhabitants depended on trade to obtain them. Despite laws passed to prevent migration from the cities to the countryside, urban areas gradually became depopulated and many Roman citizens abandoned their specialized trades to practice subsistence agriculture. This, coupled with increasingly oppressive and arbitrary taxation, led to a severe net decrease in trade, technical innovation, and the overall wealth of the Empire.[8]

The passage of Human Action in which Mises discusses the decline and fall of Rome was recently featured as a Mises Daily.

Tweedy Browne Annual Report:

http://www.tweedy.com/resources/library

_docs/reports/TBFundsAnnualReportMarch2012.pdf

Third Avenue Value Funds 2nd Qtr. Report: http://www.thirdave.com/ta/documents/reports/TAF%202Q%202012%20Shareholder%20Letters.pdf