Monday, July 1, 2013

Two Austrian posts of interest

Last week was very busy, the weekend was nuts (although I think the final room to be painted is painted!), and this week looks busy too so while I was going to think and write in depth about these I think I'm just going to share before I forget. Jonathan Catalan has two posts of interest on Austrian economics:

1. Why Do Austrians Talk About A Structure of Production? Of all the Austrian ideas, this is one that I think is a particularly important contribution. It's not so essential to everything in the economy that I have a problem with abstracting away from it to highlight some other mechanism, but it is definitely the right way of thinking about production and having an integrated structure of production (and the concept generalizes beyond time-structure although that's particularly important to ABCT) in mind when you're conceiving of general equilibrium processes is good practice, I think. One way to put it that might by palatable to non-Austrians is to think of it as technological rigidities.

2. The Importance of the Demand Shock. While the last one will challenge some non-Austrians, this one may challenge some Austrians (or maybe not).

1 comment:

  1. Those were good posts by Jonathan. However, perhaps I might have missed his point, but I personally feel that the term "structure" (and not just in the Austrian School context) isn't defined properly enough. Economic systems evolve and change over time, and this can be seen in both microeconomic and macroeconomic levels. (Of course, there are consistencies, as demonstrated through history.)

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