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Nobody concerned with political economy can neglect the history of economic doctrines. Structural changes in the economy and society influence economic thinking and, conversely, innovative thought structures and attitudes have almost always forced economic institutions and modes of behaviour to adjust. We learn from the history of economic doctrines how a particular theory emerged and whether, and in which environment, it could take root. We can see how a school evolves out of a common methodological perception and similar techniques of analysis, and how it has to establish itself. The interaction between unresolved problems on the one hand, and the search for better solutions or explanations on the other, leads to a change in paradigma and to the formation of new lines of reasoning. As long as the real world is subject to progress and change scientific search for explanation must out of necessity continue.

During the last years of his life, the mathematician Karl Menger worked on a biography of his father, the economist and founder of the Austrian School of Economics, Carl Menger. The younger Menger never finished the work. While working in the Menger collections at Duke University’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, we discovered draft chapters of the biography, a valuable source of information given that relatively little is known about Carl Menger’s life nearly a hundred years after his death. The unfinished biography covers Carl Menger’s family background and his life through early 1889. In this chapter, the authors discuss the biography and the most valuable new insights it provides into Carl Menger’s life, including Carl Menger’s family, his childhood, his student years, his time working as a journalist and newspaper editor, his early scientific career, and his relationship with Crown Prince Rudolf.

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.

A reconsideration of some Austrian work in public finance analysis that is based on a positive theory of the state and its relationship with the market economy is offered. The contributions of some prominent Austrian economists are considered, and how they relate to contemporary thinking in public finance. The two central paradigms of the tax state and entrepreneurship are explored.

The theory of monopoly price was originally formulated by Carl Menger at the inception of the marginalist revolution in 1871 and represented the dominant theoretical approach to monopoly until the 1930s. Despite its impeccable doctrinal pedigree and lengthy dominance, the theory abruptly disappeared from the mainstream neoclassical literature after the Monopolistic Competition Revolution, to be revived and reformulated after World War II by Ludwig von Mises. The present paper describes the theory as it was offered in its most sophisticated pre‐war form by American economist Vernon A. Mund, who published an unjustifiably neglected volume on monopoly theory that appeared in the same year as the classic works by Joan Robinson and Edward Chamberlain. This paper then attempts to draw out the critical implications of Mund’s formulation of the theory for the current neoclassical orthodoxy in monopoly and competition theory, including the elasticity of demand curves facing individual producers under competition, the time perspectives that are most relevant in analyzing the pricing process, the proper role of long‐run equilibrium in this analysis, and the misapplication of the marginal revenue and marginal cost concepts. Finally, the paper suggests a number of reasons why the theory was swept aside in the aftermath of the Chamberlain/Robinson Revolution with almost no resistance from its most prominent exponents.

The rediscovery of Austrian economics during the last 15 years has led to the reappearance of Menger, Mises, Hayek and, to a lesser extent, Böhm‐Bawerk in the footnotes. Next to nothing is heard of Friedrich von Wieser, Menger's successor in Vienna and inventor of the name “Austrian School”. Why is Wieser neglected in the Austrian Revival? Perhaps because economic theorists and policy makers in many countries have again become very interested in the possibilities of the market and in the applicability of the quantity theory of money — whereas Wieser was critical of both. Or perhaps because Wieser advocated an alliance of economics and sociology — whereas sociology is not very much in vogue now.

The paper aims to provide an overview of the Austrian School's approaches to the social question before World War I.

The paper takes the form of a comparative study.

In his contributions Friedrich von Wieser supported co‐operative associations as an organizational form of big enterprise to be used as instruments to ameliorate the social condition of workers; and who dealt with issues such as private ownership of the means of production and economic inequality, impact of collective bargaining on wage formation, and public economy, where he discussed the contribution of public sector production to social value. Further reports on Böhm‐Bawerk's essay on disadvantageous consequences of free competition where he came to the conclusion that free competition in reality does not maximize national economic welfare, without, however, drawing concrete policy consequences from his findings. As Austria's finance minister he introduced a modestly progressive income tax early in the twentieth century. Later, in his essay “Control or economic law” he took a more reserved position with respect to the possibilities of correcting ore modifying outcomes of the market process.

The paper illustrates that redistribution can enhance economic welfare.

Calls back to memory that opinions of the first generation of the Austrian School (Wieser, Böhm‐Bawerk) were different from Ludwig Mises' positions expressed in Die Gemeinwirtschaft that all measures of social policy are aimed at the destruction of the free market economy, which later came to be considered as the dominant position of the Austrian School towards the social question.

It is demonstrated that the Austrian school in economics had very different ideas about the creation and change of social institutions and especially about the relation of state and market, which is still one of the fundamental problems of economic theory. Menger′s fundamental distinction of pragmatic and organic institutions and Wieser′s contrary model are discussed, followed by the “impossibility theorem” of Mises and the contrary position of Schumpeter. Hayek′s liberation model of society is presented and criticised, and finally Menger′s position is interpreted as one of moderate liberal interventionism.

Suppose that an isolated colonist has just reaped his grain crop. The yield is five full sacks. He destines each sack for a specific purpose: the first sackful of grain must serve him to survive, the second one to keep him in full strength, the third will serve as fodder for his poultry, enabling him to enrich his diet with meat. He plans to use the fourth for distilling corn brandy, a luxury to him. For lack of better he destines the fifth sackful of grain for feeding his parrots: their antics amuse him. So, unmistakably, the five uses are of diminishing importance to him.

In a seeming attempt to legitimate or otherwise dignify social economics (Économie sociale, etc.), “named” economists (Adam Smith, Karl Marx et al.) have been dubbed social economists and/or regarded as having made significant but unrecognised contributions thereto. Conspicuously absent from that roster of celebrities are Léon Walras, économiste social par excellence, et al., who have distinguished themselves in the mainstream but also have done social economy(ics) explicitly, i.e. by that designation. Included in that illustrious et al. list are François Quesnay, J.B. Say, Friedrich von Wieser and Knut Wicksell (inter alios). Their due recognition, as per the present essay, cannot help but measurably further legitimise/dignify social economics.