Armen Alchian, an American economist born in Fresno, California, is in many ways like ronald coase. Like Coase, Alchian has published only a few articles, but very few are unimportant. And like Coase’s, many of Alchian’s articles are widely cited. Many students and others who read economics are disturbed by economists’ assumptions that companies maximize […]| Econlib
Economist Knut Wicksell made his name among the Swedish public with a series of provocative lectures on the causes of prostitution, drunkenness, poverty, and overpopulation. A malthusian, the young Wicksell advocated birth control as the cure for these social ills. His image as a radical social reformer did much to attract the attention of the […]| Econlib
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk was one of the leading members of the Austrian school of economics—an approach to economic thought founded by Carl Menger and augmented by Knut Wicksell, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich A. Hayek, and Sir John Hicks. Böhm-Bawerk’s work became so well known that before World War I, his Marxist contemporaries regarded the Austrians […]| Econlib
Ludwig von Mises was one of the last members of the original austrian school of economics. He earned his doctorate in law and economics from the University of Vienna in 1906. One of his best works, The Theory of Money and Credit, was published in 1912 and was used as a money and banking […]| Econlib
Economists use the term “inflation” to denote an ongoing rise in the general level of prices quoted in units of money. The magnitude of inflation—the inflation rate—is usually reported as the annualized percentage growth of some broad index of money prices. With U.S. dollar prices rising, a one-dollar bill buys less each year. Inflation thus […]| Econlib
Alfred Marshall was the dominant figure in British economics (itself dominant in world economics) from about 1890 until his death in 1924. His specialty was microeconomics—the study of individual markets and industries, as opposed to the study of the whole economy. In his most important book, Principles of Economics, Marshall emphasized that the price […]| Econlib
