An Introduction to Austrian Economics

For those coming to to Austrian Economics for the first time, it can seem a daunting process.

There are hundreds of books to choose from and many different strands of the tradition, mainly emanating from Menger, via Wieser through to Hayek and Kirzner, or via Böhm-Bawerk through to Mises and Rothbard, with much cross-fertilisation along the way. Fortunately, there is an easy beginning, which is the book Economics in One Lesson (available online in either HTML or PDF format), by Henry Hazlitt, who for many years attended the Mises Seminar, in New York.

If even this is too much for the uninitiated, there is an excellent series of 11 lectures delivered by arguably the two most important current representatives of the Misesian line of Austrian Economics; Jörg Guido Hülsmann and Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

The lectures covered are:

  • Mises and the Austrian School (Hülsmann)
  • Value, Utility and Price (Hülsmann)
  • Division Of Labor and Money (Hoppe)
  • The Theory of Banking (Hoppe)
  • Capital and Interest (Hoppe)
  • Praxeology: The Austrian Method (Hoppe)
  • Business Cycle Theory (Hülsmann)
  • The Economics of Deflation (Hülsmann)
  • Theory and History (Hoppe)
  • Welfare Economics (Hülsmann)
  • Law and Economics (Hoppe)

You can access these lectures directly via YouTube. Or for ease of use, you can click through each lecture, one after the other, on the Lew Rockwell site.

See also

Our primer.

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7 replies on “An Introduction to Austrian Economics”
  1. says: John

    Thank you for pointing me toward this. I have been studying Austrian Economics on my own for a few years and doing my best to spread the word to others.

    This series of lectures should be a big help! =)

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