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This chapter investigates the, often neglected or confused, role that History plays within Austrian Economics, and suggests ways that the former can inform the latter. Relying mostly on the work of Ludwig von Mises, the chapter explores the apparent contradictions between an a posteriori discipline like History and an a priori field like economics, and argues that they are nevertheless necessary intellectual complements of each other.

Knight’s Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit is, by the author’s own account, “a study in ‘pure theory’.” From pure theory, the scientific method’s “successive approximations” explain empirical phenomena. But Knight did not fully develop the boundary conditions for theory. In this chapter, the author elucidates the demarcation of pure theory in Risk, Uncertainty and Profit. For comparison and contrast, the author uses Mises’s Austrian aprioristic methodology praxeology and its strict distinction between theory and thymology. The author finds that Knight and Mises largely agree on the nature and importance of pure theory but differ on its meaning and use. The author’s findings suggest that Knight, while arguing for aprioristic pure theory, still places empirical observation first.

Praxeology is defined by Rothbard (1962, p. 64) as “The formal implication of the fact that men use means to attain various chosen ends.” While men use means to attain ends in areas other than economics (e.g., war, voting), the dismal science is the only deeply elaborated subdivision of praxeology. Rothbard (1962, p. 63) defines praxeological economics in contrast withpsychology [and]…the philosophy of ethics. Since all these [three] disciplines deal with the subjective decisions of individual human minds, many observers have believed that they are fundamentally identical. This is not the case at all. Psychology and ethics deal with the content of human ends; they ask, why does the man choose such and such ends, or what ends should man value? Praxeology and economics deal with any given ends and with the formal implications of the fact that men have ends and employ means to attain them.¹

Experimental economics has been treated with skepticism by some Austrian economists. We argue that experimental methods are consistent with strong versions of praxeology, and are therefore not methodologically problematic for Austrians. We further argue that experimental research methods have illustrated many uniquely Austrian themes and provide a fruitful method for future Austrian-inspired research.

Bloomington scholars are critical of the rather wide-spread “Model Platonism” of both Austrian and Chicago economists. Their empirical, B, perspective avoids the more extreme views of both Austrian “mindful economics,” A, and Chicago “mindless economics,” C. Yet the B is not a mere convex combination of A and C. It is rather a psychologically grounded empirical evidence-oriented approach that keeps clear of the non-empirical spirit of von Mises’ and Selten’s methodological dualism on one hand and the instrumentalist and behaviorist spirit of much of neo-classical economics on the other hand.

The Austrian School of Economics, pioneered in the late nineteenth century by Menger and developed in the twentieth century by Mises and Hayek, is poised to make significant contributions to the methodology, analytics, and social philosophy of economics and political economy in the twenty-first century. But it can only do so if its practitioners accept responsibility to pursue the approach to its logical conclusions with confidence and absence of fear, and with an attitude of open inquiry, acceptance of their own fallibility, and a desire to track truth and offer social understanding. The reason the Austrian school is so well positioned to do this is because (1) it embraces its role as a human science, (2) it does not shy away from public engagement, (3) it takes a humble stance, (4) it seeks to be practical, and (5) there remains so much evolutionary potential to the ideas at the methodological, analytical, and social philosophical level that would challenge the conventional wisdom in economics, political science, sociology, history, law, business, and philosophy. The author explores these five tenants of Austrian economics as a response to the comments on his lead chapter “What Is Still Wrong with the Austrian School of Economics?”

This paper provides a reappreciation of the second edition of Carl Menger’s Principles. It reconstructs his new theory of needs, which for Menger analytically precedes the valuation of goods. It is argued that this new theory of needs provides a possible bridge between economics and the natural sciences. It provided important conceptual tools for the interwar work of Ludwig von Mises on praxeology and Friedrich Hayek on expectations and plans. The new first chapter also contains a theory of collective needs, which is contextualized in the broader German-language debate over private and public provision of goods. It is demonstrated that Menger’s approach to collective needs, and the jointness of consumption is in tension with the later Samuelson/Musgrave conception of public goods, and compatible with the institutional theories in this field of James Buchanan and Vincent and Elinor Ostrom.

Prior research on consumer agency has tended to focus on contexts where there are few restrictions on the type or number of people who can consume a desired object, provided they have adequate resources. This study develops theoretical insights into the modes of consumer agency adopted by consumers who desire a commodity that is in scarce supply, and to which access is restricted by powerful agents. Based on interviews and archival data from the fashion modeling industry, and drawing on Bourdieu's praxeology, this paper identifies distinct modes of consumer agency that are manifest in a context characterized by enforced scarcity. Depending in part upon initial human capital endowments, in part upon conditions in the field, and in part upon deliberate choices, models adopt different modes of agency in order to survive, thrive in a highly restricted aesthetic field and ultimately consume the coveted good, which we refer to as the “model life.” This paper thus contributes not only to our understanding of consumer agency in an under-studied type of context, but also to our understanding of the seemingly burgeoning phenomena of the quest for fame, celebrity, and status.

All chapters in this volume explore connections between certain streams in philosophy and OT. As the titles of the chapters suggest, most authors write about a particular philosopher or group of philosophers that makes up a distinct school of thought, summarize important aspects of his/their work and tease out the implications for OT. The central question authors explore is: ‘what does a particular philosophy contribute to OT?’ Whether addressing this question in historical terms (‘what has been the influence of a particular philosophy on the development of certain OT approaches?’), exploratory terms (‘what benefits to organizational analysis does a particular philosophy bring?’) or a combination of both, the end result is similar: particular philosophical issues, properly explained, are discussed in relation to important questions in OT.