Portrait of Ludwig von Mises

Ludwig von Mises

1881 – 1973

Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) was the acknowledged leader of the Austrian School of economic thought, a prodigious originator in economic theory, and a prolific author. Mises’ writings and lectures encompassed economic theory, history, epistemology, government, and political philosophy. His contributions to economic theory include important clarifications on the quantity theory of money, the theory of the trade cycle, the integration of monetary theory with economic theory in general, and a demonstration that socialism must fail because it cannot solve the problem of economic calculation.

Mises was the first scholar to recognize that economics is part of a larger science in human action, a science which Mises called “praxeology”. Mises wrote many works on two related economic themes: 1. monetary economics, [inflation], and the role of government, and 2. the differences between government-controlled economies and free trade. His influential work on economic freedoms, their causes and consequences, brought him to highlight the interrelationships between economic and non-economic freedoms in societies, and the appropriate role for government.

See also our collection of extracts, essays, and other resources on Mises.

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See the Liberty Matters online discussions on The Misesian Paradox: Interventionism Is Not Sustainable and Ludwig von Mises’s The Theory of Money and Credit at 101.

Read the Liberty Classics Ludwig von Mises’s Socialism: A Still Timely Case Against Marx, Liberalism versus the State, and Alternatives to a Burgeoning Bureaucracy: Lessons from Ludwig von Mises’s Bureaucracy from Econlib

Read the Liberty Classics Individualism Rightly Understood from Law & Liberty

Mises featured as the September 2020 OLL Birthday. Read it here

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See the Timeline of the Life and Work of Ludwig von Mises:

Key: events in the author’s life (blue); historical events (green); books & organisations (red).

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