Austrian Economics

The Austrian School is a school of economic thought that is based on methodological individualism – the concept that social phenomena result from the motivations and actions of individuals. It originated in late-19th and early-20th century Vienna with the work of Carl Menger, Eugen Böhm von Bawerk, Friedrich von Wieser, and others. It was methodologically opposed to the Prussian Historical School (in a dispute known as Methodenstreit). Current-day economists working in this tradition are located in many different countries, but their work is still referred to as Austrian economics.

Among the theoretical contributions of the early years of the Austrian School are the subjective theory of value, marginalism in price theory, and the formulation of the economic calculation problem, each of which has become an accepted part of mainstream economics.

Since the mid-20th century, many economists have been critical of the Austrian School and consider its rejection of econometrics and aggregate macroeconomic analysis to be outside of mainstream economic theory, or "heterodox". Austrians are likewise critical of mainstream economics. Although the Austrian School has been considered heterodox since the late 1930s, it began to attract renewed interest in the 1970s, after Friedrich Hayek shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

The Austrian School owes its name to members of the German historical school of economics, who argued against the Austrians during the late-19th century Methodenstreit ("methodology struggle"), in which the Austrians defended the role of theory in economics as distinct from the study or compilation of historical circumstance. In 1883, Menger published Investigations into the Method of the Social Sciences with Special Reference to Economics, which attacked the methods of the Historical school. Gustav von Schmoller, a leader of the Historical school, responded with an unfavorable review, coining the term "Austrian School" in an attempt to characterize the school as outcast and provincial. The label endured and was adopted by the adherents themselves.

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