Austrian School

Analytical framework

Austrian economists reject observation as a tool applicable to economics, saying that while it is appropriate in the natural sciences where factors can be isolated in laboratory conditions, acting human beings are too complex for this treatment. Instead one should isolate the logical processes of human action - a discipline named praxeology by Ludwig von Mises.

Related Topics:
Praxeology - Ludwig von Mises

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Austrians view entrepreneurship as the driving force in economic development, see private property as essential to the efficient use of resources, and often see government interference in market processes as counterproductive.

Related Topics:
Entrepreneurship - Economic development - Private property

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As with neoclassical economists, Austrians reject classical cost of production theories, most famously the labor theory of value. Instead they explain value by reference to the subjective preferences of individuals. This psychological aspect to Menger's economics has been attributed to the schools birth in turn of the century Vienna. Supply and demand are explained by aggregating over the decisions of individuals, following the precepts of methodological individualism, which asserts that only individuals and not collectives make decisions, and marginalist arguments, which compare the costs and benefits for incremental changes.

Related Topics:
Classical - Labor theory of value - Vienna - Supply and demand - Methodological individualism - Marginalist

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Contemporary neo-Austrian economists claim to adopt economic subjectivism more consistently than any other school of economics and reject many neoclassical formalisms. For example, while neoclassical economics formalizes the economy as an equilibrium system with supply and demand in balance, Austrian economists emphasize its dynamic, perpetually dis-equilibrated nature.

Related Topics:
Economic subjectivism - Equilibrium

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The core of the Austrian framework can be summarized as taking a subjectivist approach to marginal economics, and a focus on the idea that theory should absolutely overrule observation. Austrians focus completely on the opportunity cost of goods, as opposed to balancing downside or disutility costs. It is an Austrian assertion that everyone is better off in a mutually voluntary exchange, or they would not have carried it out. A fuller explanation of this in more exact terms is available at the New School's economic pages.

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This focus on opportunity cost alone means that their interpretation of the time value of a good has a strict relationship: since goods will be as restricted by scarcity at a later point in time as they are now, the strict relationship between investment and time must also hold. A factory making goods next year is worth as much less as the goods it is making next year are worth. This means that the business cycle is driven by miscoordination between sectors of the same economy, caused by money not carrying incentive information correct about present choices, rather than within a single economy where money causes people to make bad decisions about how to spend their time. This means, in the Austrian context, the correct way to prevent imbalances in the economy is to make people want to buy the correct goods, rather than controlling when people buy goods.

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