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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.

According to Friedrich A. von Hayek, trade unions are the primary problem of our times. They coerce employers into raising the wages, and they seek privileges in the political sphere. This harsh judgement is, however, not fully justified by Hayek's own theory of action and order. In addition to some terminological difficulties, he undervalues his insights – developed and applied elsewhere – of competition as a discovery process and of locally available knowledge when it comes to unions. Following this lead, further functions of trade unions apart from their monopoly face appear: trade unions channel information and develop rules for conflict resolution; they are part of a process of preference formulation and opinion formation.

The Nationalökonomische Gesellschaft (Austrian Economic Association, NOeG) provides a prominent example of the Viennese economic circles and associations that more than academic economics dominated scientific discourse in the interwar years. For the first time this chapter gives a thorough account of its history, from its foundation in 1918 until the demise of its long-time president, Hans Mayer, 1955, based on official documents and archival material. The topics treated include its predecessor and rival, the Gesellschaft österreichischer Volkswirte, its foundation in 1918 soon to be followed by years of inactivity, the relaunch by Mayer and Mises, the survival under the NS-regime and the expulsion of its Jewish members and the slow restoration after 1945. In particular, an attempt is made to provide a list of the papers presented to the NOeG, as complete as possible, for the period 1918–1938.

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.

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.

In the early 1930s, Nicholas Kaldor could be classified as an Austrian economist. The author reconstructs the intertwined paths of Kaldor and Friedrich A. Hayek to disequilibrium economics through the theoretical deficiencies exposed by the Austrian theory of capital and its consequences on equilibrium analysis.

The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.

The integration of capital theory into a business cycle theory by the Austrians and its shortcomings – e.g. criticized by Piero Sraffa and Gunnar Myrdal – called attention to the limitation of the theoretical apparatus of equilibrium analysis in dynamic contexts. This was a central element to Kaldor’s emancipation in 1934 and his subsequent conversion to John Maynard Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936). In addition, it was pivotal to Hayek’s reformulation of equilibrium as a social coordination problem in “Economics and Knowledge” (1937). It also had implications for Kaldor’s mature developments, such as the construction of the post-Keynesian models of growth and distribution, the Cambridge capital controversy, and his critique of neoclassical equilibrium economics.

The close encounter between Kaldor and Hayek in the early 1930s, the developments during that decade and its mature consequences are unexplored in the secondary literature. The author attempts to construct a coherent historical narrative that integrates many intertwined elements and personas (e.g. the reception of Knut Wicksell in the English-speaking world; Piero Sraffa’s critique of Hayek; Gunnar Myrdal’s critique of Wicksell, Hayek, and Keynes; the Hayek-Knight-Kaldor debate; the Kaldor-Hayek debate, etc.) that were not connected until now by previous commentators.

Since the late 1970s, research in accounting has been colonized by positive accounting theory (PAT) despite strong claims that it is fundamentally flawed in terms of epistemology and methodology. This paper aims to offer new insights to PAT by critically examining its basic tenets.

The paper subjects the language of the Rochester School to a deconstruction that is a transformational reading. This uncovers rhetorical operations and unveils hidden associations with other texts and ideas.

A new interpretation of the Rochester School discourse is provided. To afford scientific credibility to deregulation within the accounting field, Watts and Zimmerman used supplements and missing links to enhance the authority of PAT. They placed supplements inside their texts to provide a misleading image of PAT. These supplements rest on von Hayek's long‐term shaping blueprint to defeat apostles of the welfare state. Yet, to set PAT apart from normative theories that Watts and Zimmerman claimed were contaminated by value judgments, they made no reference in their text to the tight links between the Rochester School and the libertarian project initiated by von Hayek.

Any reading of PAT cannot present the infinite play of meaning that is possible within a text. Deconstruction involves a commitment to on‐going, eternal questioning.

The paper provides evidence of the relation between PAT and the neoliberal (libertarian) project of von Hayek. PAT is viewed as part of the institutional infrastructure and ideological apparatus that legitimates the hegemony of markets.

After the precipitated decline of the Soviet Empire and its satellite states, a system change seemed to be called for, and many countries embarked on social and political reforms focussing on property structures in the economy. This raised the issue of governance in the institutions that would constitute the structures in which production would have to take place. In particular, some Central European countries opted for mass privatisations of the means of production, on the face of it so as to have the people participate in the wealth of the nation. In fact, the wealth of the nation depends on the structures in which it is constituted. Dissipation of property rights will reduce the value of the nation's productive capital, whereas an intelligent structure that creates good governance structures at the same time, increases the value of the producing capital. This relatively simple insight lies at the heart of our understanding of how to analyse different processes of mass privatisation. This essay develops a theoretical framework by which different governance structures can be analysed. The framework consists of a blend of the economic theory of property rights, new institutional economics and Austrian economic theory.

The epithet “Austrian” in “Austrian economics” is applied to the work of economists as far apart in time as Carl Menger, whose Grundsätze der Volkswirthschaftslehre (Principles of Political Economy) first appeared in 1871, and Ludwig Lachmann, Israel Kirzner and Murray Rothbard, writing a century or more later. It would be vain to attempt to define Austrian economics by a set of beliefs, commonly held by its adherents. There is much to be said for following Zuidema (1987), who prefers to speak of “styles” rather than “schools”. This implies that there need be no clear‐cut dividing lines between Austrians and the rest of the economics fraternity and that not all those dubbed “Austrian” are necessarily “typically” Austrian all of the time. There certainly seems to be a style of reasoning that can be seen as specifically Austrian. Some of the components of a “style” mentioned by Zuidema are:

The paper offers a number of vignettes surrounding Friedrich A. Hayek’s receipt of the Nobel Prize. It examines Hayek’s life before he got the prize, describes the events in Stockholm, and offers a summary of the main themes of his Prize Lecture. It then examines the subsequent impact on Hayek’s life and career. It concludes by looking at the impact of the Prize on scholarship about Hayek and the Austrian movement.