RESOURCES > ECONOMIC THOUGHT

Schools of economic thought describes the variety of approaches in the history of economic theory noteworthy enough to be described as a 'school of thought'. While economists do not always fit into particular schools, particularly in modern times, classifying economists into schools of thought is common. Economic thought may be roughly divided into three phases: premodern (Greco-Roman, Indian, Persian, Arab, and Chinese), early modern (mercantilist, physiocrats) and modern (beginning with Adam Smith and classical economics in the late 18th century). Systematic economic theory has been developed mainly since the beginning of what is termed the modern era.
The Austrian School is in the news as never before. It is discussed on business pages, academic journals, and speeches by public figures. Today, there are many clamouring for the Austrian School of Economic Thought to be brought in full force to correct discontinuos economics and repair national economies across the World. This renewed interest is as a result of the financial crisis. Because of this, Nosa Associates decided to bring in a section covering Austrian Economics. So what is the Austrian School or Austrian Economics? Find out in the books you can download from this site. Here are just a few for your edification:

What Has Government Done To Our Money? By Murray N. Rothbard

What Has Government Done To Our Money? By Murray N. Rothbard
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When this gem first appeared in 1963, it took the form of a small paperback designed for mass distribution. We've conjured up that spirit again with this special edition of Rothbard's primer on money and government.

Innumerable economists, investors, commentators, and authors have learned from this book through the decades. After fifty years, it remains the best book in print on the topic, a real manifesto of sound money.

Rothbard boils down the Austrian theory to its essentials. The book also made huge theoretical advances. Rothbard was the first to prove that the government, and only the government, can destroy money on a mass scale, and he showed exactly how they go about this dirty deed.

Economics in One Lesson By Henry Hazlitt

Economics in One Lesso By Henry Hazlitt
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Henry Hazlitt wrote this book following his stint at the New York Times as an editorialist. His hope was to reduce the whole teaching of economics to a few principles and explain them in ways that people would never forget. It worked. He relied on some stories by Bastiat and his own impeccable capacity for logical thinking and crystal-clear prose.
He was writing under the influence of Mises himself, of course, but he brought his own special gifts to the project. This is the book to send to reporters, politicians, pastors, political activists, teachers, and anyone else who needs to know.

Principles of Economics By Carl Menger

Principles of Economics By Carl Menger
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In the beginning, there was Menger. It was this book that reformulated, and really rescued, economic science. It kicked off the Marginalist Revolution, which corrected theoretical errors of the old classical school. These errors concerned value theory, and they had sown enough confusion to make the dangerous ideology of Marxism seem more plausible than it really was.

Menger set out to elucidate the precise nature of economic value, and root economics firmly in the real-world actions of individual human beings.

For this reason, Carl Menger (1840-1921) was the founder of the Austrian School of economics. It is the book that Mises said turned him into a real economist. What's striking is how nearly a century and a half later, the book still retains its incredible power, both in its prose and its relentless logic.

The Failure of the New Economics By Henry Hazlitt

The Failure of the New Economics By Henry Hazlitt
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Henry Hazlitt did the seemingly impossible, something that was and is a magnificent service to all people everywhere. He wrote a line-by-line commentary and refutation of one of the most destructive, fallacious, and convoluted books of the century. The target here is John Maynard Keynes's General Theory, the book that appeared in 1936 and swept all before it.

In economic science, Keynes changed everything. He supposedly demonstrated that prices don't work, that private investment is unstable, that sound money is intolerable, and that government was needed to shore up the system and save it. It was simply astonishing how economists the world over put up with this, but it happened. He converted a whole generation in the late period of the Great Depression. By the 1950s, almost everyone was Keynesian.

But Hazlitt, the nation's economics teacher, would have none of it. And he did the hard work of actually going through the book to evaluate its logic according to Austrian-style logical reasoning. The result: a 500-page masterpiece of exposition.

The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle and Other Essays Edited By Richard M. Ebeling

The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle and Other Essays Edited By Richard M. Ebeling
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New edition with an introduction by Roger Garrison and an index. Booms and busts are not endemic to the free market, argues the Austrian theory of the business cycle, but come about through manipulation of money and credit by central banks. In this monograph, Austrian giants explain and defend the theory against alternatives. Includes essays by Mises, Rothbard, Haberler, and Hayek. In his later years, Professor Haberler distributed many of these monographs to friends and associates.
The Mystery of BankingClick image to download
Mystery of Banking, The Murray N. Rothbard

Talk about great timing. Rothbard's extraordinary book unravels the mystery of banking: what is legitimate enterprise and what is a government-backed shell game that can't last. His explanation is clear enough for anyone to follow and yet precise and rigorous enough to be the best textbook for college classes on the topic. This is because its expositional clarity--in its history and theory--is essentially unrivaled.

Most notably, he uses the T-account method of explaining the relationship between deposits and loans, showing the inherent instability of fractional-reserve banking and how it sets the stage for centralization, inflation, and the boom-bust cycle.
The Triumph of GoldClick to image to download
Triumph of Gold by Charles Rist

Charles Rist explores the history of gold as a monetary standard in the United States as well as conventional misconceptions during and after its implementation in US monetary policy. This book contains many of his speeches, articles, and some personal reflections of this world-renowned monetary economist. Rist does a magnificent job of highlighting and debunking various fallacies regarding opposition to gold as a monetary standard.

What You Should Know About Inflation By Henry Hazlitt

What You Should Know About Inflation By Henry Hazlitt
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The book's title--What You Should Know About Inflation—only hints at the extent of the issues that Hazlitt addresses. He presents the Austrian theory of money in the clearest possible terms, and contrasts it with the fallacies of government management. He takes on not only the Keynesians but also the monetarists, as well as anyone who believes that government debt accumulation and manipulation of interest rates are harmless.

So this book is about far more than inflation. He touches on a wide variety of macroeconomic topics, any area of economic policy that is related to the monetary regime, including budget and trade issues, as well has the economic history of inflation. Neither does he neglect the moral cost of inflation.

Economics For Real People By Gene Callahan

Economics For Real People By Gene Callahan
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The second edition of the fun and fascinating guide to the main ideas of the Austrian School of economics, written in sparkling prose especially for the non-economist. Gene Callahan shows that good economics isn't about government planning or statistical models. It's about human beings and the choices they make in the real world.

This may be the most important book of its kind since Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson. Though written for the beginner, it has been justly praised by scholars too, including Israel Kirzner, Walter Block, and Peter Boettke.

Defending The Undefendable By Walter Block

Defending The Undefendable By Walter Block
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It is among the most famous of the great defenses of victimless crimes and controversial economic practices, from profiteering and gouging to bribery and blackmail. However, beneath the surface, this book is also an outstanding work of microeconomic theory that explains the workings of economic forces in everyday events and affairs.

Murray Rothbard explains why:

"Defending the Undefendable performs the service of highlighting, the fullest and starkest terms, the essential nature of the productive services performed by all people in the free market. By taking the most extreme examples and showing how the Smithian principles work even in these cases, the book does far more to demonstrate the workability and morality of the free market than a dozen sober tomes on more respectable industries and activities. By testing and proving the extreme cases, he all the more illustrates and vindicates the theory."

The Austrian School of Economics: A History of Ideas, Ambassadors, & Institutions By Eugene Maria Schulak & Herbert Unterklofer

The Austrian School of Economics
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The Austrian School of Economics: A History of Its Ideas, Ambassadors, and Institutions, by Eugen Maria Schulak and Herbert Unterköfler appeared first in German. It has been a sensation: the first and most authoritative source on this hot topic. This new English translation by Arlene Oost-Zinner, complete with a vast scholarly apparatus of citations and bibliographies, is academic at its core but also easy-to-read, entertaining, and fascinating on every page.

They set the stage with a discussion of the culture of 19th century Vienna, and the striking innovation that came with Carl Menger’s subjective theory of value. They discuss the titanic struggle over method that took place between the Viennese Mengerians and the German Historical School.

Next comes a thrilling account of the second generation of Austrians, their politics, their theories, their personal splits, their idiosyncrasies, their debates. The cast of characters here is far larger than most people in the English-speaking world have known. 

The Inflation Crisis and How to Resolve It By Henry Hazlitt

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Prices are rising, as they inevitably must with an expansionary policy, and who is getting the blame? Not the Fed. Commentators claim it's the weather or foreigners with greedy appetites for goods.

It has always been so: when the inflation arrives, the relationship between cause and effect is lost. This precisely why Hazlitt wrote this fantastic book. He drives home the point that the issue is not weather, not greed, not gouging, but monetary policy of the central bank.

It's never been more important than now that Hazlitt's message be heard.
Choice in CurrencyClick image to download
Choice in Currency by Friedrich A. Hayek

A path-breaking essay by Hayek, newly in print in cooperation with the Institute of Economic Affairs, this piece first appeared in 1976, during an inflationary bout in the U.S.. Hayek saw that it was crucial to bring the forces of competition to bear in currency markets, not just between countries but within them as well.

All people should be free to use any currency of their own choosing, even if that means rejecting the favored domestic one. This provides a check against inflation, permitting citizens to keep assets denominated in any unit. Governments, then, would have greater incentive avoid inflating because a depreciating unit would lead people to flee to other currencies. 
The Politics of ObedienceClick image to download
The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude by Etienne de la Boetie

States are more vulnerable than people think. They can collapse in an instant—when consent is withdrawn.

This is the thesis of this thrilling book. Murray Rothbard writes a classic introduction to one of the great political essays in the history of ideas. In times when dictators the world over are falling from pressure from their own people, this book, written nearly 500 years ago, is truly the prophetic tract of our times.

Étienne de La Boétie was born in Sarlat, in the Périgord region of southwest France, in 1530, to an aristocratic family, and became a dear friend of Michel de Montaigne. But he ought to be remembered for this astonishingly important essay, one of the greatest in the history of political thought. It will shake the way you think of the state. His thesis and argument amount to the best answer to Machiavelli ever penned as well as one of the seminal essays in defense of liberty.