{"id":58703,"date":"2021-07-22T05:54:26","date_gmt":"2021-07-22T10:54:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58703"},"modified":"2021-07-22T05:54:26","modified_gmt":"2021-07-22T10:54:26","slug":"review-austrian-economics-an-introduction-by-steven-horwitz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58703","title":{"rendered":"Review: Austrian Economics–An Introduction By Steven Horwitz"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

REVIEW: AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS \u2013 AN INTRODUCTION BY STEVEN HORWITZ<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
June 27 saw the passing of economist Steven Horwitz at the age of 57. His loss will be felt by all who value not just human freedom and dignity, but also good economics, communicated well.<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

Horwitz was heavily influenced by the \u2018Austrian School\u2019 of economics. What this is and what it means are questions Horwitz tackled in his last book,\u00a0Austrian Economics: An Introduction<\/em><\/a>, published last year.<\/p>\n

The school was founded by Carl Menger, an economist in Vienna, Austria, in the late 19th century. The origins of its name lie in a dispute over methodology and the story of its rise to prominence lies in the \u2018marginalist\u2019 revolution in economics in the 1870s. Both involve fundamental questions of economics, but they might be heavy going for the moment. Suffice it to say that from these origins a rich and profound body of inquiry and insight has emerged.<\/p>\n

Horwitz explains that:<\/p>\n

For Menger, economics was the study of how humans possessing limited knowledge and facing an uncertain future attempted to improve their well-being by figuring out what they wanted and how best to get it.<\/em><\/p>\n

In an article titled \u2018On the Origin of Money<\/a>,\u2019 Menger explained how money, which is a very useful institution, evolved: it wasn\u2019t created. This led him to ask, in his book\u00a0Investigations into the Methods of the Social Sciences<\/em><\/a>, what is sometimes called the \u201cMengerian question\u201d:<\/p>\n

How can it be that institutions which serve the common welfare and are extremely significant for its development come into being without a common will directed toward establishing them?<\/em><\/p>\n

In his excellent book\u00a0Hayek\u2019s Modern Family: Classical Liberalism and the Evolution of Social Institutions<\/em><\/a>, Horwitz applied this analysis to the evolution of the family. As Horwitz notes:<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

REVIEW: AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS \u2013 AN INTRODUCTION BY STEVEN HORWITZ June 27 saw the passing of economist Steven Horwitz at the age of 57. His loss will be felt by all who value not just human freedom and dignity, but also good economics, communicated well. Horwitz was heavily influenced by the \u2018Austrian School\u2019 of economics. What […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2125,8870,7380,31464,31465],"class_list":["post-58703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-austrian-economics","tag-carl-menger","tag-cobden-centre","tag-john-phelan","tag-steven-horwitz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58704,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58703\/revisions\/58704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}