Théorie(s) autrichienne(s) : un nain dans la science économique ?

[DiabloSwing]

Tenez, voici un avis pêché sur le net :

La seconde est que personne n a jamais injecte d argent dans le système depuis trente ans. On a injecte un max de crédit, des titres de dettes pour permettre à l argent des uns de continuer à aspirer l argent des autres, de plus en plus vite, de plus en plus fort. En appelant monnaie, l argent et le crédit, on rend impossible une compréhension juste des phénomènes en cours. C est d ailleurs, la raison pour laquelle l école libérale autrichienne, trop ancienne et si peu respectable, passe à côte du probleme, ca et le fait que son corpus théorique restreint ne lui permettra jamais de comprendre que les États doivent jouer le rôle d amortisseur et de régulateur, comme le pensent à juste titre les ordoliberaux.

Voilà comment l'école autrichienne est perçue…je ne dis pas qu'elle est comme ça hein.

[xara]

The Second Austrian Revival

Mises Daily: Thursday, March 18, 2010 by Joseph T. Salerno and Jeffrey A. Tucker

[This article is adapted from introductory remarks delivered by the first coauthor at the Austrian Scholars Conference, March 11–13, 2010, Auburn, Alabama. Both the oral remarks and the written article are joint products of both coauthors.]

When the first Austrian Scholars Conference was held in 1992, we were at the very beginning of the Great Bubble Economy, brought to you by Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke and their associates at the Fed. This shiny, bubbly "new economy" has finally gone the way of all bubble economies in history, deflating into stale dishwater and swirling slowly but surely down the recessionary drain. But it has left in its wake something truly amazing, something that never could have been foreseen: a second Austrian revival.

The first Austrian revival blossomed in 1974 as a result of the conjunction of two unique events. In June, a group of 50 Austrian economists and graduate students met in the tiny hamlet of South Royalton, Vermont. (Some participants still swear that the place was haunted, but that is a story for another day.) In October, Friedrich A. Hayek, a protégé of Ludwig von Mises and an eminent economist in his own right, was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for his pathbreaking theoretical work on money, capital, and business cycles. But despite these events, Austrian economic theory did not leave much of an impression on mainstream economics. Nor did it make inroads into the economic journalism and financial commentary of the day.

Hayek and Murray N. Rothbard, Mises's preeminent American follower, were relegated to the "soft" areas of economics, like methodology, political economy, and social philosophy. True, some mainstream economists did admit that the Austrians had insightful criticisms of positivist methodology and that they made a provocative, albeit extreme, case against socialism and for the free-market economy. But Austrian economic theory itself was either completely ignored or dismissed out of hand as backward and outmoded. Thus many young Austrians soon abandoned research in technical economic theory altogether and drifted off into methodology and comparative economic systems, where they could at least get a hearing for their views. Unfortunately, the lofty theorists of the mainstream considered these areas the intellectual backwaters of economics, whose inhabitants were mere essayists.

"Recognizing the inability of their sophisticated models to predict or even explain the financial collapse and subsequent Great Recession, leading macroeconomic theorists of the day have lapsed back into raw and simplistic Keynesianism."

All that has now changed with the sudden implosion of the false prosperity that was built upon more than a decade of low interest rates and fiat-money inflation. Without a landmark conference or the fanfare of another Nobel Prize winner, a second Austrian revival has grown spontaneously out of the failure of mainstream macroeconomists to adequately explain the inflation and bursting of the high-tech and real-estate bubbles. The subsequent collapse and the Fed bailout and virtual nationalization of the entire financial sector also caught the macroeconomists completely unawares, overturning their theory of central banking and monetary-stabilization policy that had been so carefully developed in countless journal articles since the 1980s.

We can date the second Austrian revival almost precisely to the fall of 2008. From that point on, the use of online Austrian resources on Mises.org abruptly doubled from one year earlier, as investors, media commentators, and the public at large frantically sought answers from all quarters while witnessing one iconic financial institution after another topple into bankruptcy. In addition, the Austrians have benefitted from bestselling books, public figures who champion their cause, prominent financial experts who defend the Austrian point of view, new research tools made available via digital media, and a burst of new interest from a new generation.

But happily, unlike the first revival, the second revival of Austrian economics has focused on the economic theory of Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard. Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong, two prominent ultra-Keynesians, now felt compelled to learn about and try to refute the Austrian theory of the business cycle. Other macroeconomists such as Lee Ohanian of UCLA were inspired to reexamine the historical record and found that Rothbard was right about the causes of the severity of the Great Depression. In an article published in one of the leading mainstream theoretical journals, the Journal of Economic Theory, Ohanian concluded,

My analysis also provides a theory for why low nominal spending — deficient aggregate demand — generated such a large depression in the 1930s, but not in the early 1920s, which was a period of comparable deflation, but when industrial firms cut nominal wages considerably. In the absence of Hoover's program, my analysis indicates that the Depression would have been much less severe. The 1930s would have been a substantially better economic decade had the government not adopted programs that artificially raised real wages in industrial labor markets and prevented those markets from clearing.[1]

Recognizing the inability of their sophisticated models to predict or even explain the financial collapse and subsequent Great Recession, leading macroeconomic theorists of the day have lapsed back into raw and simplistic Keynesianism. They call for ever more fiscal and monetary stimulus via massive deficits and zero interest rates. These traditional stimulus policies have failed to ignite a strong recovery even though they were implemented on a massive scale.

But the manifest failure of such policies does not give their proponents pause; it only incites them to propose ever more bizarre schemes. One such proposal is inspired by the monetary crank Silvio Gesell, who Keynes once called a "strange, unduly neglected prophet." The modern version of Gesell's plan calls for a tax on the public's bank deposits and currency holdings as a means of driving nominal interest rates below zero and thereby stimulating total spending.[2]

The only coherent alternative to this antiquated Keynesianism and monetary crankism is Austrian monetary and business-cycle theory. It is the 1930s revisited. The dust has settled, and the wreckage of modern macroeconomics has been cleared, and once again the Hayekians face the Keynesians across the intellectual battlefield. Indeed this message has been brought home even to the layperson in the recent online Keynes–Hayek rap-video sensation, "Fear the Boom and Bust," produced by John Papola and Russ Roberts.

It is important to note that the renewal of interest in Austrian theory might have never occurred or quickly fizzled out if the resources had not been available to support it. These intellectual resources were provided by the Mises Institute, which almost singlehandedly kept the Austrian tradition in monetary and business-cycle analysis alive.

Examples abound. Rothbard's America's Great Depression was kept in print, and a second edition of his Mystery of Banking was brought out in 2008. Prices and Production and Other Works, a collection of Hayek's most important theoretical writings, many long out of print, was published in 2008. This was followed by A Tiger by the Tail in 2009, a compact collection of excerpts from Hayek's work, tailored to a popular audience. The Mises Institute also published fresh perspectives on Austrian macroeconomics, most notably Jesús Huerta de Soto's treatise on Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles, published in 2006 and, in a second edition, in 2009. In addition, the Mises Institute has made available online almost all the important works in Austrian economic theory that have been published since the founding of the school by Carl Menger in 1871.

The result of all this material and intellectual preparation is that the battle between the Austrians and Keynesians is likely to turn out very differently this time around. The Austrians are well armed with sound and true theoretical weapons that have been renewed and enhanced since the clashes of the 1930s. Keynesianism in all its variations has been repeatedly tried and found wanting. It has lost its tactical advantage: it is no longer new and never was true. Its intellectual leaders are in a state of disarray and confusion. The long run is at hand for Keynesianism, and it is ready to be interred.

So this year the Austrian Scholars Conference marks something very special. We gathered, not just to teach and learn from one another, but to set the agenda for the future of economic science.

Jeffrey Tucker is the editor of Mises.org. Send him mail. See Joseph T. Salerno's article archives.

Joseph Salerno is academic vice president of the Mises Institute, professor of economics at Pace University, and editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. He has been interviewed in the Austrian Economics Newsletter and on Mises.org. Send him mail. See Jeffrey A. Tucker's article archives.

This article is adapted from introductory remarks delivered by the first coauthor at the Austrian Scholars Conference, March 11–13, 2010, Auburn, Alabama. Both the oral remarks and the written article are joint products of both coauthors.

Notes

[1] Lee Edward Ohanian, "What — or Who — Started the Great Depression?" Journal of Economic Theory, vol. 144, issue 6 (2009) pp. 2310–2335. A prepublication version of the article is available here.Download PDF The quotation in the text appears on p. 26 of this version.

[2] See N. Greg Mankiw, "Reloading the Weapons of Monetary Policy," Greg Mankiw's Blog: Random Observations for Students of Economics (March 19, 2009); Willem H. Buiter, "Overcoming the zero bound on nominal interest rates: Gesell's currency carry tax vs. Eisler's parallel virtual currency: Discussion of Mitsuhiro Fukao's 'The effects of "Gesell" (currency) taxes in promoting Japan's economic recovery'," International Economics and Economic Policy, Volume 2, Numbers 2–3 ( November, 2005): pp. 189–200; and Marvin Goodfriend, "Overcoming the Zero Bound on Interest Rate PolicyDownload PDF," The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Working Paper Series (August 2000).

[Winsor]

We can date the second Austrian revival almost precisely to the fall of 2008. From that point on, the use of online Austrian resources on Mises.org abruptly doubled from one year earlier, as investors, media commentators, and the public at large frantically sought answers from all quarters while witnessing one iconic financial institution after another topple into bankruptcy. In addition, the Austrians have benefitted from bestselling books, public figures who champion their cause, prominent financial experts who defend the Austrian point of view, new research tools made available via digital media, and a burst of new interest from a new generation.

But happily, unlike the first revival, the second revival of Austrian economics has focused on the economic theory of Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard. Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong, two prominent ultra-Keynesians, now felt compelled to learn about and try to refute the Austrian theory of the business cycle. Other macroeconomists such as Lee Ohanian of UCLA were inspired to reexamine the historical record and found that Rothbard was right about the causes of the severity of the Great Depression. In an article published in one of the leading mainstream theoretical journals, the Journal of Economic Theory, Ohanian concluded,

Excellent !!!

Je savais pas qu'elle avait connu un tel regain d'intérêt.

Le deuxième paragraphe cité m'intéresse particulièrement.

Les seules théories à l'encontre de l'ABCT que je connaisse sont le Hangover de Krugman et les esprits animaux des économistes disons "keynésiens", et d'autres critiques un peu plus diverses et surtout plus éparses comme Cowen et Caplan.

Xara, si tu connais d'autres critiques adressées à la théorie du cycle à part celles citées plus haut, n'hésites pas à les poster ici.

Car elles sont encore rares malheureusement, c'est bien pour ça que ça m'intéresse.

[pierreyves]

Bon, le sujet a maintenant bien dévié, au point où on en est :

pierreyves, par simple curiosité, dis-moi si tu es conscient que ce dont tu parles (observation et déduction) constituait la pierre angulaire des sciences avant l'apparition de ce qu'on appelle aujourd'hui la "méthode scientifique".

Une description serait plutôt observation - induction - deduction … et j'ai de bonnes raison de penser que Einstein fonctionnait plus ou moins comme ça.

Mais pour répondre à la question: j'en doute, et j'attends la réponse à la question suivante pour argumenter:

Qu'appelles-tu la "méthode scientifique" ?

[Randian shithead]

Une description serait plutôt observation - induction - deduction … et j'ai de bonnes raison de penser que Einstein fonctionnait plus ou moins comme ça.

Mais pour répondre à la question: j'en doute, et j'attends la réponse à la question suivante pour argumenter:

Qu'appelles-tu la "méthode scientifique" ?

Voilà qui répond à ma question.

(Sinon, je parlais de la méthode hypothético-déductive)

[pierreyves]

Voilà qui répond à ma question.

(Sinon, je parlais de la méthode hypothético-déductive)

Pour moi la méthode hypothético-déductive entre bien dans le cadre épistémologique que je donnais ci-dessus puisqu'une observation préalable est nécessaire à la formulation de l'hypothèse (formulation dans laquelle l'induction tient un rôle prépondérant). La "méthode scientifique" communément admise à notre époque est donc au fond la même que celle que je décrivais.

[pierreyves]

A propos d'innovation pure, dans la tradition autrichienne, il y a cette proposition de Guido Hülsman: http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae5_4_7.pdf

En deux mots, il critique la conception habituelle de "time preference" et établit une théorie de l'intérêt sur de nouvelles bases. Je ne suis sans doute pas assez expert, mais cela me semble prometteur.

Vu la portée potentielle de ce texte, je pense que ça réfute parfaitement l'idée que la théorie autrichienne n'avance plus de nos jours …

[DiabloSwing]

Notons que lorsque j'ai ouvert le topic, je m'interrogeais plus sur la capacité à cette école à se faire entendre en tant que pensée économique libérale, et sa capacité à avoir leadership, plutôt que laisser le champ libre au néoclassicisme ou au monétarisme.

[xara]

A propos d'innovation pure, dans la tradition autrichienne, il y a cette proposition de Guido Hülsman: http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae5_4_7.pdf

En deux mots, il critique la conception habituelle de "time preference" et établit une théorie de l'intérêt sur de nouvelles bases. Je ne suis sans doute pas assez expert, mais cela me semble prometteur.

Vu la portée potentielle de ce texte, je pense que ça réfute parfaitement l'idée que la théorie autrichienne n'avance plus de nos jours …

Raison pour laquelle je l'ai évoqué entre autres exemples plus haut. Plus précisément, pour illustrer la nouveauté. Que ce soit une réelle avancée est une autre question.

[pierreyves]

Notons que lorsque j'ai ouvert le topic, je m'interrogeais plus sur la capacité à cette école à se faire entendre en tant que pensée économique libérale, et sa capacité à avoir leadership, plutôt que laisser le champ libre au néoclassicisme ou au monétarisme.

C'est un tout autre problème. Les autres écoles sont écoutées lorsqu'elles permettent aux politiciens de "manager" la population. La théorie autrichienne ne permet pas ça, et donc n'intéresse pas la majorité des hommes politiques.

[(=S=)]

Keep the faith…

Austrian economists today have a valuable opportunity to rejoin the mainstream of the economics profession. As Colander, Holt, and Rosser have argued, neoclassical orthodoxy is no long mainstream. What I call the “heterodox mainstream” is an emerging new orthodoxy. The five leading characteristics of the emerging new orthodoxy are bounded rationality, rule following, institutions, cognition, and evolution. When listed in this order, they suggest the acronym BRICE. The Austrian school is also an example of BRICE economics. The shared themes of BRICE economics create an opportunity for intellectual exchange between Austrians and other elements of the heterodox mainstream. Although Austrians should engage the heterodox mainstream energetically, they should also defend the essential elements of an early version of neoclassical economics, elements at risk of becoming half-forgotten themes of an earlier era. These elements are supply and demand, marginalist logic, opportunity-cost

reasoning, and the elementary theory of markets.

Roger Koppl, (2006) "Austrian economics at the cutting edge", Review of Austrian Economics, 19:231–241

Cf. aussi "Les curieux destins d'une hétérodoxie : la tradition économique autrichienne" de Thierry Aimar dans le n° spécial de la Revue française d'économie consacré "Nouveaux horizons de l'Ecole autrichienne d'économie", vol. 22, avril 2008, pp.3-18

[xara]

Recemment dans The New American: Austrian Economics Rising

[vincponcet]

Recemment dans The New American: Austrian Economics Rising

interressant

à noter que le disclaimer à la fin montre plus que des sympathies avec MI & co.

ce n'est pas que du journalisme en l'occurrence.

[Retour-Arrière]

J'ai trouvé « Une autre histoire de la pensée économique» de G. Dréan. Je pense qu'ici cela peut intéresser quelqu'un, car il parle beaucoup de l'école autrichienne.

Le document : Une autre histoire de la pensée économique

Et le billet : http://gdrean.blogspot.com/2010/01/mon-his…economique.html

[Troy89]

Merci pour ce lien, c'est intéressant ! Les cours d'économie que j'ai reçu n'ayant jamais été fondés sur une étude de l'épistémologie en économie, ça me manquait beaucoup.

[DiabloSwing]

Le dernier Enjeux des échos (avec dossier sur l'Allemagne), un article sur l'école de Chicago…les mots "ultralibéral", "libertariens" sont lâchés comme autant d'insultes dont il convient de se distancier. Mais diantre, pas une seule comparaison avec l'école Autrichienne => elle n'existe pas. A moins que ça ne soit un oubli voulu (/théorie du complot).

[Invité]

La perspective autrichienne, c'est comme une théorie révolutionnaire en physique, elle peut mettre un siècle avant d'être réputée et de recevoir l'attention qu'elle mérite.

[ph11]

Donc, voilà ma question : est-ce que en tant que libéraux, on ne donne pas trop de poids intellectuellement parlant aux théories économiques autrichiennes ? Faut-il devenir raisonnable et devenir monétariste ?

Pourquoi ? Si tu es contre la peine de mort et que la majorité des gens sont pour, tu vas être pour la peine de mort ?

[DiabloSwing]

C'était une question rhétorique un peu absurde, pas le fond de ma pensée. L'inexistence des autrichiens dans les médias économiques classiques est frappante même quand ça cause libéralisme donc je me posais la question "et si finalement ils avaient raison d'ignorer ce courant de pensée ? Si c'était les libéraux du net qui sont dans une bulle autrichienne ?".

Finalement ma réponse varie entre incompétence et malhonnêteté journalistique et peut-être une difficulté à vendre les travaux de cette école. Mais avec le net ça change, y a même pas mal de gauchistes qui connaissent Bastiat ou Mises. Mais je continue, surtout en 2010, avec le web démocratisé et ayant pris de l'ampleur a trouver symptomatique l'absence des autrichiens.

[Invité]

L'économie est un centre d'intérêt que peu de gens ont, j'en parle à mes amis, à ma copine, je leur pompe l'air en vingt minutes même si au début j'arrive à éveiller l'intérêt, c'est pour cela qu'on semble le plus présent sur internet, mais IRL il y a des autrichiens. Il y a peu d'opportunités IRL d'échanger des idées entre économistes (amateurs comme pros) de tout bord, seul internet le permet puisqu'il n'y a plus de contraintes géographiques.