The consumer in Austrian economics and the Austrian perspective on consumer policy
A. R. Leen, H. Folmer (Thesis advisor), W. J. M. Heijman (Thesis advisor)
In Part I, "The Consumer in Austrian Economics" I looked at the questions (1) What is Austrian economics? (2) What is the Austrian methodology? and (3) What about the consumer in Austrian economics? The first chapter explains the name Austrian. Although it indeed began in Austria, today it has nothing to do with that country. The term Austrian means a way of looking at the subject and the method of economic science. The perfectly-competitive model of mainstream economics is replaced by the notion of the entrepreneurial-competitive market process. The second chapter looks at the method of Austrian economics: praxeology. It is the verbal elaboration of the logical implication that men act. The title of Mises's book "Human Action" sums it up. Purposes direct all conscious human action. Every human act exchanges something possessed for something preferred. All human action attempts to change the future. The chapter examines what this means for the Austrian perspective on some basic economic notions of human action and non-action (valuation and indifference curves), and economic laws (the law of decreasing returns). Economists use their minds to deduce conclusions; experience in human action is history and only history. There is a sharp difference between Austrian and mainstream neoclassical economics; the latter is often mathematically moulded and econometrically tested, the former never
eBook, English, 1999
[s.n.], [S.l.], 1999