I think we need to be a little more conscious of what “Austrian economics” is supposed to mean. I like to think of it as everything coming down from the “Mises Circle.” Mises headed one of those Viennese “circles” of which the “Vienna Circle” is the most famous. He had amazing people around him, including Hayek, Oskar Morgenstern, and Fritz Machlup. If you trace it out, it turns out that these guys had a big hand in shaping post-war orthodoxy in microeconomics. (http://rss.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/16/1/45) If you take that approach to Austrian economics, than it would be a bit of a mistake to expect “them” to be “claiming” any one thing. It’s a tradition of thought, not a finite set of crisp “claims” we might test or “believe in” or something.
A lot of criticism of “Austrian economics” is aimed either at Rothbard and his closest followers or at methodology. The Rothbard group is happy to claim the mantle, but not always so good about taking seriously the heritage
they lay claim to. I guess we could set ourselves that easy target and be happy with our superiority. But I’d rather try to see what made the Mises Cirlce such a big deal. IMHO there are riches there we haven’t fully exploited.
As for “the” methodology of “Austrian economics,” I think we need remember a few things. As someone has noted, I think, Mises “apriorism” was descriptive, not prescriptive. He was saying, “This is how it really happens.” And what did he say happens? You construct an argument. If your argument is tight, there isn’t really any question about “testing” it anymore than you “test” a theorem in geometry. But your assumptions may or may not fit and you’d sure better check about that. I absolutely think there are holes to poke in Mises’ methodology, but if you compare it to the silliness it was responding to, it starts to look pretty good. And he, Mises, was decades ahead of figures such as Lakatos and his “hard core.” I never quite understand why people miss that connection and why they insist on judging his position worked out circa 1930 by today’s standards of argument. Anyway, “Austrian economics” includes Hayek, who holds up very well indeed by today’s standards of argument in epistemology and methodology.
I think we need to be a little more conscious of what “Austrian economics” is supposed to mean. I like to think of it as everything coming down from the “Mises Circle.” Mises headed one of those Viennese “circles” of which the “Vienna Circle” is the most famous. He had amazing people around him, including Hayek, Oskar Morgenstern, and Fritz Machlup. If you trace it out, it turns out that these guys had a big hand in shaping post-war orthodoxy in microeconomics. (http://rss.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/16/1/45) If you take that approach to Austrian economics, than it would be a bit of a mistake to expect “them” to be “claiming” any one thing. It’s a tradition of thought, not a finite set of crisp “claims” we might test or “believe in” or something.
A lot of criticism of “Austrian economics” is aimed either at Rothbard and his closest followers or at methodology. The Rothbard group is happy to claim the mantle, but not always so good about taking seriously the heritage they lay claim to. I guess we could set ourselves that easy target and be happy with our superiority. But I’d rather try to see what made the Mises Cirlce such a big deal. IMHO there are riches there we haven’t fully exploited.
As for “the” methodology of “Austrian economics,” I think we need remember a few things. As someone has noted, I think, Mises “apriorism” was descriptive, not prescriptive. He was saying, “This is how it really happens.” And what did he say happens? You construct an argument. If your argument is tight, there isn’t really any question about “testing” it anymore than you “test” a theorem in geometry. But your assumptions may or may not fit and you’d sure better check about that. I absolutely think there are holes to poke in Mises’ methodology, but if you compare it to the silliness it was responding to, it starts to look pretty good. And he, Mises, was decades ahead of figures such as Lakatos and his “hard core.” I never quite understand why people miss that connection and why they insist on judging his position worked out circa 1930 by today’s standards of argument. Anyway, “Austrian economics” includes Hayek, who holds up very well indeed by today’s standards of argument in epistemology and methodology.