I have heard the claim that the Austrian school is the fastest growing school of economic thought. I would love to believe that this is true, but what is the evidence? How does anyone know?
If so, people must be hiding their knowledge really well.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it were true among lay people. Ron Paul supporters would be evidence of that I think. I hadn’t a clue what Austrian economics was a few years ago, but now that’s totally different. It was all because of Ron Paul introducing it to me (and then the Mises Institute for providing me the reading material).
And now there is a lot of mistrust of the Fed among the general public (even if they are unacquainted with ABCT), which is a cause of the Austrian school.
I’m sure it is. With the Mises institute, a variety of libertarian crusaders throughout the internet, and most importantly the Ron Paul campaign, all of which are directly related to, and backed by Austrian Economics, making modern libertarianism the second real mass movement to be backed by a school of economics, the first being the socialist movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The thing with other economic schools is that they aren’t involved with modern political movements in just about any way, and they aren’t seeking to educate the public on their teachings, and that is how the Austrians might win.
I’ve always searched for ‘minority lore’ in any given field. Meaning that which is not currently in favor but might yet be profitable. For instance, ‘method acting’ is not historically the main way acting was accomplished, not that I became an actor 
There always seems to be hidden or forgotten corners of info in any field which generally tends to be much better than the prevailing wisdom somehow.
When studying economics in college, I was taught Keynes, etc., and I knew there were other schools of thought and discovered Austrianism back then. It actually made me really angry at my professors, to be taught stuff that I knew was wrong, right there in class. Oh really, so pumping the economy is going to solve every problem, riiight. Maybe that’s partially why I never majored in econ, despite having a strong interest in it since early highschool.
Whether Austrianism is ‘fastest growing’ or not, don’t let it fool you into thinking things will soon change or anything like that.
The reason Keynes is such a factor in public policy is because his theories give politicians intellectual cover to do what they already wanted to to: to spend money and control the economy. That’s it. That’s the only reason Keynes is everywhere politically.
There’s no question of principle or truth about it. Especially on the left which doesn’t even believe in truth!
Austrian economics has grown significantly since 1974.
Austrian economics was virtually extinct when Keynes “won”. Lachmann called the 40-60’s “the years in the Wilderness”, and used to joke he and Hayek were the only Austrians left. He was not exagerrating by much. The “revival” was pre-empted by writings such as Human Action, Capital and It’s Structure, and Competition and Entrepreneurship. But really came into fruition with Rothbards MES, the 1974 conference, and Hayeks nobel prize. And with the Ron Paul campaign, Mises Institue, etc it has made leaps and bounds in the popular mindset. It would take a leap of logic to say it’s growth hasn’t been impressive.
No clue on the fastest growing school. We need criterea and a method of verification. Post-Keynesian thought has been growing - and Keynesianism is back from the dead. So there is at least that to think about.
This could be a true fact though I can’t imagine how one could actually determine such a thing. This is probably a function of the very small size of the Austrian school - a school of size 1 that gets 1 new convert has grown to 200% of its original size.
Clayton -
Clayton’s got it. Most of the time you hear this “fastest growing [whatever]” claim, it’s simply a misleading way to imply popularity so as to sound interesting and make people think you’re telling them something that’s not obvious. (Of course the places you usually hear these claims are virtually always media outlets.) “Senior citizens are the fastest growing Internet demographic.” “People over 60 are the fastest growing age group of facebook users”.
Duh. Everyone else is already f-ing using the Internet and Facebook.
I think that it’s important to note that not very many people consider themselves as part of a school of economics. How many casual liberals do you know who would really identify themselves as “Keynesians”? Meanwhile I feel that a good number of libertarians, especially in its newcomers, consider themselves as adherents of the Austrian Economic school, and probably know more about the school than the average liberal who will probably know nothing more than Keynes’ name and the 5 second rundown of stimulus economics.
What exactly’s the difference between Post-Keynesianism and New Keynesianism? I know the former is considered a “heterodox school”, much like the Austrians.
New Keynesians believe that, if only prices were perfectly flexible, then economies would adjust rapidly to full employment equilibrium. Post Keynesians, following Keynes himself, reject the view that perfectly flexible wages, prices and perfect competition would lead to full employment equilibrium. Even if there were perfectly flexible wages and prices, there could still be failures of aggregate demand (Davidson 1992).
Source: http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2012/06/price-rigidity-in-new-keynesianism-and.html
What exactly’s the difference between Post-Keynesianism and New Keynesianism? I know the former is considered a “heterodox school”, much like the Austrians.
here is a cool blog I found with great resources:
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/
From what I know, post-Keynesians focus a lot on uncertainty, subjectivism, and heterodox methodology. They focus more on Chapt 12 and 17 of General Theory. From what I can make out, for an Austrian it may be the most interesting and closest related school in economics.
whoops,Wheylous beat me to the punch,
same blog and everything
That lord Keynes guy is the poster boy for intellectual dishonesty. Unless he’s actually dumb. I’ve written about him in my blog here and there.
Take for example, his latest scribbling, http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2012/07/hayek-and-pinochet-endless-love.html
He quotes Mises on Fascism, calling what Mises wrote disgraceful. But if one reads the section on Fascism, of which that quote is the last paragraph, one gets a totally different picture.
As for that quote by Hayek, he is again being intellectually dishonest, writing that Hayek’s saying sometimes a dictatorship can be a good thing means Hayek loved every bad thing any dictatorship has ever done. By the same token Lord keynes admiration of democracy means he approves of everything the Nazis ever did, because Hitler was democratically elected.
If that’s the case that’s a lot of problems I have with political conversation.
Pay attention to the analytical framwork and the conclusions that can be drawn from the thinkers, if that is what they are doing. Focusing on buzzwords like “fascism” is silly bullshit, or even Mises personal traits and political agendas - these things are irrelevant. Of course, every side of the spectrum in politics is guilty of this, and it is very very frustrating
Every once in a while I try to join in debates with ‘Lord Keynes’ (for example: “Sloppy Interpretations” and “Fiduciary Cycles”), and I have to agree: he either oftentimes doesn’t understand what he reads/quotes/skims, or he purposefully takes them out of context.
I’ve heard this is a myth. Not that it matters, but we should at least be as accurate as possible.
Even if not democratically elected, Hitler was democratically supported, as the quote at the end of that article demonstrates.
That’s where I got it from, too, Schirer’s book.
States quite clearly that he was democratically elected, by a two thirds majority.
Jonathan,
In our last debate, it was you who glossly misunderstood Mises and Rothbard’s view of the market’s tendency to equilibrium, by absurdly transforming them into radical subjectivists. When challenged again and again to cite one Austrian eocnomist who agreed with you in this nonsense, you threw a tantrum.
And then you actually backtracked from your extreme position over at Isaac Marmolejo’s blog in this comment:
“It would be more defensible to argue that he [sc. Mises] believed in a short-run tendency towards equilibrium. But, Mises held that the real world is characterized by constant changes in the data, and it is these changes that creates disequilibrium. If these changes are constant occurring then it is impossible for there to be a long-run tendency towards equilibrium.”