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F. A. Hayek’s macroeconomic theory and policy ideas have gained renewed attention since the cheap-money boom until 2007, and subsequent bust, followed the basic Hayekian narrative. Only to a very limited extent, however, do we find Hayek’s ideas on the agenda of mainstream macroeconomic researchers since Robert Lucas’s research program gave way to “Neoclassical” and “New Keynesian” DSGE models. We find examples of deeper interest on the periphery of the mainstream. Hayek’s influence on today’s macroeconomic policy discussions remains similarly limited, although he has become an icon to some opponents of loose monetary policy.

This chapter provides a comprehensive survey of the contributions of the Austrian school of economics, with specific emphasis on post-WWII developments. We provide a brief history and overview of the original theorists of the Austrian school in order to set the stage for the subsequent development of their ideas by Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek. In discussing the main ideas of Mises and Hayek, we focus on how their work provided the foundations for the modern Austrian school, which included Ludwig Lachmann, Murray Rothbard and Israel Kirzner. These scholars contributed to the Austrian revival in the 1960s and 1970s, which, in turn, set the stage for the emergence of the contemporary Austrian school in the 1980s. We review the contemporary development of the Austrian school and, in doing so, discuss the tensions, alternative paths, and the promising future of Austrian economics.

For nearly 80 years, the field of macroeconomics has largely been shaped by the aftermath of the Keynesian revolution. Many economists have argued that this revolution and the subsequent internal and external disputes it has sparked have had the unfortunate side effect of crowding out much of what was good in macro-level analysis before it, leading to the dissatisfactory state of macroeconomics we have today. In the search for alternative paths for macroeconomics, I focus on two separate but compatible traditions: monetary disequilibrium (MD) theory and the Austrian business cycle theory (ABCT). I argue that scholars in these traditions employed a far richer micro-theoretic explanation for the business cycle well before Keynes’s General Theory. Unfortunately, their ideas were not united in time to mount a sufficient counterattack to the Keynesian crusade. My goal is to unite the best elements of these two traditions by providing what I believe is the “missing link” that can help connect these alternative paths: free banking theory.

Austrian economics today is a living research program, pursued by scholars around the globe, associated with an intellectual lineage that began in Vienna with Carl Menger's 1871 Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre (Principles of Economics).¹ Menger's ideas were soon advanced by his followers Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk and Friedrich von Wieser. In the mid-20th century Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek did the most to extend economic research along Mengerian lines. Some of the Mengerian innovations (marginalism, opportunity cost) have been incorporated into mainstream neoclassical economics, and Mises and Hayek viewed their own research program merely as modern economics.² But as Israel Kirzner (1994, p. xii) has noted, those involved in “the contemporary post-Misesian revival of Austrian Economics” now appreciate “the distinctiveness of the Austrian tradition” stemming from Menger.³

The chapters collected in this volume were originally given at a memorable 2005 conference in Edmonton, Canada. Our host was the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies. The conference organizer, Professor Vivek H. Dehejia of Carleton University assembled an impressive and amiable group of scholars, each of whom has a serious interest in the Austrian school of economics. The Wirth Institute took its current name in recognition of the generous endowment of Dr. Manfred Wirth and his son Dr. Alfred Wirth. Their generosity to the institute reflects a commitment to their Austrian heritage that extends beyond present-day Austria to encompass the broad cosmopolitan legacy of central Europe as a whole. Conference participants could not fail to notice the dedication of Wirth Institute staff including its Director, Dr. Franz A. J. Szabo, to the common cultural legacy of central Europe.

Nancy Maclean’s Democracy in Chains (2017) is an attempt to provide a narrative arc for the rise of free market ideas in political action during the second half of the twentieth century and into the first decades of the twenty-first century. The central character in her narrative is neither F.A. Hayek nor Milton Friedman, let alone Adam Smith or Ludwig von Mises, but James M. Buchanan, the 1986 Nobel Prize winner in economics. MacLean argues that rather than extol the virtues of the market economy as Hayek and Friedman did before him, Buchanan focused on the dysfunctions of politics. Due to a series of argumentative fallacies and failures that follow from her ideological blinders, I argue that MacLean’s attempt is a missed opportunity to seriously engage some very pressing issues in public choice and political economy and understand how James Buchanan attempted to resolve them in a democratic manner. As such, Democracy in Chains is not only a mischaracterization of Buchanan and his project but also a poignant lesson to us all about how ideological blinders can subvert even the sincerest effort to unearth truth in the social sciences and the humanities.

The purpose of this paper is to correct Rozeff (2010). He contends that fractional-reserve banking is legitimate and efficacious. The authors demonstrate that it is not.

The design of this paper is to quote widely from Rozeff (2010) and then to expose his errors of analysis.

The authors demonstrate that fractional-reserve banking is neither legitimate nor efficacious.

Money is the lifeblood of the economy. If so, then banking is the marrow of the economy, since it is from that sector that money arises in the first place. It is crucially important, then, that the monetary system be based on sound principles. Fractional-reserve banking is a violation of these sound principles. Therefore, it is valuable to demonstrate that this is indeed the case.

Some economists who normally prefer to rely on free market solutions to economic problems often consider money a special good that requires government control to prevent overissue. But free banking advocates take the position that the market can control the supply of money without any government imposed rule. The type of banking system envisioned by the latter school would be one in which banks would be subjected to no restrictions regarding balance sheet choices and would be allowed to charge what they want on loans and pay what the market dictated on any source of funds. Each bank would be free to issue distinctive banknotes as well as deposits redeemable into some reserve asset that banks would hold in accordance with their goal of profit maximization subject to the necessary liquidity cost. There would be no required reserve holding, no minimum amount of capital, nor any restrictions on the type of loans a bank could make, nor where they could establish branch offices. Government's only role would be to enforce contracts and to punish fraud.

There are more scholars teaching and actively engaged in research associated with the Austrian School of Economics now than at any other time in its history. However, there is still something seriously wrong within the Austrian School and changes must be made both individually and collectively. In this piece, the author first discusses scientific progress with an emphasis on the individual behavior that is required to contribute to science, and the horizontal relationships that are required for the spread of ideas within a scientific community. Next, the author discusses the example of the Austrian school from 1950 to today in terms of these horizontal relationships within the profession and, in particular, in comparison with other mainline contributors during the same time period. The author then will address the multiplicity of horizontal relationships that might be explored as alternative discourse communities in the contemporary intellectual landscape. Lastly, the author concludes that the Austrian School of Economics must cultivate an explicit awareness of plausible, intrinsically interesting, and creative research agendas, and must therefore regard their work as a productive input into the ongoing research production of others within the broader community of economists and political economists.