In answering this thread, I discovered this little gem:
Both early and recent empirical work has provided some support for Austrian views of boom and bust.4 Austrian theory suggests that tests involving movements in output magnitudes must be formulated at a suitably low level of aggregation. The thorny issues of capital theory, however, make direct testing difficult. One testable implication of the malinvestment that characterizes an unsustainable boom is the distress borrowing and hence the high real rates of interest on the eve of the bust. Charles Wainhouse [1984, 64] uses Granger causality tests to show that movements in interest rates and relative prices during the 1960s and 1970s are consistent with the hypothesis that at the end of the boom “the prices of consumer goods rise relative to the prices of producers’ goods, reversing the initial shift in relative prices.”5
Further empirical work inspired by plucking should maintain a clear distinction between Friedman’s boom (recovery to trend) and Mises’ boom (credit-induced malinvestment). It should also recognize that distress borrowing, which characterizes the natural end of a credit-induced boom, can also result from an exogenous credit contraction. But even in advance of further testing, we can reject Friedman’s decisive refutation: Plucking describes the economy’s performance at the highest level of aggregation; Austrian theory offers an insightful account of the market process that might underlie those aggregates.
Early work by Frederick C. Mills [1936] of the National Bureau of Economic Research focused on four temporally distinct subaggregates (raw materials, manufacturing, wholesaling, and retailing) and showed that movements in prices associated with these subaggregates are consistent with the Austrian theory: Temporal remoteness from consumption positively affects the interest-rate sensitivity of prices. Most recently, Butos [1993] found (weak) support for the Austrian theory using data on interest rates and bank credit from the 1980s bull market.
This hypothesis, which deals the interest rate in Friedman’s “cosmopolitan” sense, is one of several derived from Hayek’s formulation of the Austrian theory and supported by the data. Testing failed to reject this hypothesis for the periods 1964-67 and 1977-80.
Here is also a paper published in the Review of Austrian Economics Vol. 14 no. 4 entitled Empirical Evidence on the Austrian Business Cycle. The abstract states:
The Austrian business cycle theory suggests that a monetary shock disturbs relative prices, such as the
term structure of interest rates, systematically altering profit rates across economic sectors. Resource use responds
to those changes, generating a cyclical pattern of real income. The divergence of the interest rate structure, from
the previous and unchanged time preferences, means that the expansion is unsustainable and must end in recession.
Quarterly data for eight U.S. business cycles, 1950:1 through 1991:1 are standardized by time period and used to
explore business cycle facts and relations between money, interest rates, capacity utilization and income. Results
are consistent with the hypotheses of the Austrian theory of a business cycle caused by a monetary shock and
propagated by relative price changes.