4 ms·

Meh, Hayek was awarded the Nobel. The Austrian school does have a lot of useful insights. Perhaps those insights are not so amenable to the kind of economics th

by rsj_hn 5y ago

Meh, Hayek was awarded the Nobel. The Austrian school does have a lot of useful insights. Perhaps those insights are not so amenable to the kind of economics that is a fruitful research field and can get grants, but that doesn't mean it's not fruitful for understanding the economy. The main reason why the Austrians tend to be snubbed is that their insights are primarily qualitative rather than quantitative, and thus are not the kinds of things that followers can build on to get published. That does not mean that people who do get published aren't taking inspiration from Austrian economics or learning important lessons from this field. This is the problem with a lot of heterodox econ, btw.

SideQuark 5y ago
Hayek got a Nobel for decidely non-Austrian work. His Austrian work was widely panned, and he moved away from it later in life. His co-winner was displeased to win a Nobel on a topic shared with someone like Hayek who early in his career pushed a lot of stuff that didn't pan out. Hayek also never embraced all the stuff Austrians taught, such as Mises claiming neoclassical was completely flawed, whereas Hayek accepted the majority of neoclassical as correct. Hayek does not take Mises a priori approach to economics whatsoever. There's plenty more. So if your claim is that Austrian is reasonable because a big person believes it, this is not that person. Whenever someone points out that Mises and Austrian economics is not very relevant to modern economics, and someone invariable pulls out the lone closest thing they can find, know that this is not quite true. >The main reason why the Austrians tend to be snubbed is that their insights are primarily qualitative There's entire subfields of well published and researched economics that do this that are not Austrian. If you simply google "why is Austrian economics snubbed" you get a whole host of decent sources showing how it fails to match empirical evidence. That is the reason it's snubbed. It sounds pretty, appeals to Libertarians, but does not match observed evidence. That's good enough reason to stop any line of thought from being accepted science. (Of course, when you build your entire field on rejecting empirical evidence, of course you end up with beliefs and theories that do not match empirical evidence, so no surprise there).

by rsj_hn 5y ago

SideQuark 5y ago

Hayek got a Nobel for decidely non-Austrian work. His Austrian work was widely panned, and he moved away from it later in life. His co-winner was displeased to win a Nobel on a topic shared with someone like Hayek who early in his career pushed a lot of stuff that didn't pan out. Hayek also never embraced all the stuff Austrians taught, such as Mises claiming neoclassical was completely flawed, whereas Hayek accepted the majority of neoclassical as correct. Hayek does not take Mises a priori approach to economics whatsoever. There's plenty more. So if your claim is that Austrian is reasonable because a big person believes it, this is not that person. Whenever someone points out that Mises and Austrian economics is not very relevant to modern economics, and someone invariable pulls out the lone closest thing they can find, know that this is not quite true. >The main reason why the Austrians tend to be snubbed is that their insights are primarily qualitative There's entire subfields of well published and researched economics that do this that are not Austrian. If you simply google "why is Austrian economics snubbed" you get a whole host of decent sources showing how it fails to match empirical evidence. That is the reason it's snubbed. It sounds pretty, appeals to Libertarians, but does not match observed evidence. That's good enough reason to stop any line of thought from being accepted science. (Of course, when you build your entire field on rejecting empirical evidence, of course you end up with beliefs and theories that do not match empirical evidence, so no surprise there).