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Austrian Economics in America: The Migration of a Tradition.
By Karen I. Vaughn. Historical Perspectives on Modern Economics.
New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Pp. xiv, 198. $49.95. ISBN 0-521-44552-3.

ome books are distinguished by inaccuracies, stilted or

idiosyncratic interpretations or by a simple lack of schol-

arship. These are simply forgettable with “the only bad

review being only an obituary.” Others are this and plenty
more—they do actual and discernible damage to the subject they
seek to treat. Such is the case with this book that seeks to “clear away
the underbrush so that the hoped-for revolution [an Austrian revo-
lution] can have a more hospitable soil in which to take root.” Not
only does it not clear “the underbrush” (a silly and inapt metaphor),
Vaughn’s book shows little appreciation for the development of
Austrian economics in the United States or anywhere else, or for its
present or future status. Austrian economics fortunately is made of
sterner stuff and will survive this treatment. Vaughn does serious
damage to fair interpretation nonetheless. In my view (and I am more
a sympathizer than a card-carrying Austrian), her stance, if it is really
taken seriously, builds a catafalque for this critically important area
of economic thought.

The title of this book, if not the content, suggests three possibly
important issues that Vaughn might have considered. First, what is
the nature of the tradition, history, and economic theory of the
Austrian school? Second, does Austrian economics stand as a sepa-
rate and coherent theory today? Finally, has an expanded neoclassical
analysis paralleled or “absorbed” Austrian notions of ignorance,

Review of Austrian Economics 10, no. 2 (1997): 133-38
ISSN:0889-3047

133


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134 Review of Austrian Economics 10, No.2 (1997)

time, the entrepreneur, and knowledge requirements? This book
fails to contribute in any meaningful way to any of these matters.

The historiography of Austrian thought and the “tradition” of
which Professor Vaughn speaks is reduced to a few well-known
figures and ideas (chapters 2—5) flavored only with Vaughn's stilted
interpretations. I find both the older and the more modern writers
of the Austrian school to be critically misrepresented in this ac-
count.

Consider the older tradition, whose font was the triumvirate of
Carl Menger, Friedrich von Wieser, and Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk.
Vaughn devotes two chapters to Menger and “Mengerian themes”
(found in Hayek in particular) in a summary of well-known litera-
ture. Her treatment boils down to an assertion that Menger’s themes
of knowledge, ignorance, time, and process were the singular es-
sences of Austrian economics. Wieser and Bohm-Bawerk are de-
picted as not having “a Mengerian vision” (p. 7). This is utter non-
sense. Vaughn believes that Menger’s “themes” were resurrected in
the socialist calculation debates between Ludwig von Mises and the
“neoclassicals.” She should consider Wieser’s Natural Value, his Social
Economics, and the writings of Bohm-Bawerk more closely.

In Natural Value (1883), Wieser outlines and then destroys the
theoretical case for socialism by directly confronting the argument
that profits and interests are necessary payments but not necessary
receipts (the socialist argument). [ further suggest that her dismissal
of Wieser (see pp. 33-35) as a closet neoclassical is preposterous
when one reads his Social Economics (completed in 1914 but not
published until after World War I). In it Wieser made giant strides
toward the development of a number of contemporary Austrian
themes, including (a) the emergence of institutions as the result of
spontaneous order; (b) the depiction of competition as a rivalrous
process opposed to (simply) a static model; and (c) the key role of
the entrepreneur in the economic process. The integration of eco-
nomic theory into a theory of institutional change, a clear extension
of Menger’s work on the development of money, is perhaps the most


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Book Reviews 135

important of these genuine achievements, especially given the con-
cerns of some contemporary Austrian and neo-institutional econo-
mists.

The dismissal of Wieser and Bohm-Bawerk as Austrians of the
older school is, unfortunately, only one example of Vaughn’s serious
lapse of accuracy and incompleteness.” Her spotty and sparse atten-
tion to the Austrian tradition in America is an even more glaring and
disastrous omission. While Mises, who was Bshm-Bawerk’s (not
Menger’s) student, and Hayek get some summary treatment, it is as
if economists such as Joseph Schumpeter, Gottfried Haberler, Oskar
Morgenstern, Fritz Machlup, and Paul Rosenstein-Rodan did not
even exist, let alone constitute an inextricable part of the “tradition.”
A footnote or two (see p. 36 n. 22) and a blanket dismissal of these
game players as “neoclassical sympathizers” just doesn’t get to the core
of these critical contributions to the Austrian way of thinking.

I know, for example, that Oskar Morgenstern considered himself,
first, last, and always, a direct descendant of and a worker in the fields
of the Austrian tradition. In 1969, when he visited Texas A&M for
several long stints, Morgenstern lectured to my “thought” classes on
Austrian economics and its development in America. My yellowing
notes reveal that Morgenstern had a clear grounding in Mengerian
principles and that grounding was a vital part of Morgenstern’s re-
search at the time (on stock market prices, I believe). He had my class
reading his Accuracy of Economic Observations, written in 1950 (second
edition 1963). While purporting to recount “the Austrian tradition,”

1Bshm-Bawerk’s extension of Menger’s subjective exchange theory and his
Mengerian discussion of the process of exchange is yet another obvious lapse in
Vaughn’s account.

Her interpretation of the methodenstreit ignores the impact of the iron-fisted
system of university administration in Germany, although Vaughn provides the
shallow statement that Schmoller “managed to keep Mengerians out of academic
positions in Germany” (p. 36) without further explanation. Where, in addition,
is an analysis of early Austrian influences in England at the hands of William
Smart (see his Theory of Value, 1891) and others in Vaughn’s account of the
“migration of a tradition”?


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136 Review of Austrian Economics 10, No.2 (1997)

Vaughn virtually ignores the work which most clearly explains why
the all-too-frequent misuse of econometrics should be taken with a
grain of salt—a very modern Austrian predilection.

Vaughn’s non-treatment of serious scholars whose works flow
into both Austrian and non-Austrian mainstreams reflects a more
basic problem in her entire treatment. Her treatment is itself based
on an idiosyncratic interpretation of what Austrian economics or neo-
classical economics (for that matter) is.” The limited perspective is
furthered by her very interpretation of Austrian economics as essen-
tially (only?) the economics of time and ignorance. Great attention
is lavished (pp. 92-178) on this idée fixe which occupies almost half
of the book. At the risk of trite paraphrase, this view may be summa-
rized: Since we cannot know what we cannot know (the future), and
since econometrics is of no help, predictive models are useless or are
“severely limited.” This, at least to this reviewer’s mind, is the core
problem with the book, and the reason why it damages the topic it
seeks to venerate.

Ludwig Lachmann and his coven, including the hermeneuticians,
have driven a wing of the Austrian movement to an anti-scientific
theological view of “what Austrian economics is.” Radical views of
knowledge and knowledge requirements force a retreat to decon-
structive anti-science with which Vaughn flirts. (On this point I am
in full agreement with the late Professor Murray Rothbard.) Pursuit
of this Holy Grail will leave Austrian economics and any other branch
of thought that embraces it exactly nowhere.” Hermeneutics is, root
and branch, a surrealist stupidity reminiscent of the Roman Church’s

30n page 9 of her book, for example, Vaughn virtually equates neoclassical
economics with constrained maximization. She also has trouble with possible
differences between “mainstream economics” and “neoclassical economics.”
But brushing aside the differences, she alleges that these constitute a “program
that explains all human action as variations on constrained maximization where
preferences are considered to be given, well-ordered, and stable, and where
there is widespread knowledge of constraints.” An opposing view is contained in
recent works by Douglas North, Gary Becker, and William Baumol.


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Book Reviews 137

attacks on science or the fundamentalist attack on biology. There is
no “middle-of-the-road” in this war that does not, of necessity, spit
on science and scientific principles. Perhaps the romance with her-
meneutics or its variations might end in the creation of a magic
decoder ring.’

Large chunks of this book are devoted to sterile and unnecessary
attempts on the part of some Austrians, including the author, to “find
themselves” and define a new paradigm. It would be facile to dismiss
this book as a patchy-idiosyncratic summary of some Austrian ideas,
because the errors and lapses go much deeper than that. Even though
there is little new in the book, the interpretation she provides is a call
to nihilism. From that undiscovered country, as Hamlet noted in
another context, no traveler returns. When the direction of eco-
nomic activity cannot be predicted or predicated upon some solid
behavioral responses, markets do not matter, and their defense is
irrelevant much as they are at the hands of the rational mechanics
that the Austrians so fondly (and correctly) assail.

Fortunately, Austrian endeavors and prospects are more solid and
promising than Vaughn proposes. Rather than simply being the “eco-
nomics of time and ignorance,” Austrian concerns bridge and inti-
mately connect with a number of areas with a complexity that belies

*Vaughn does not note that these movements are taking place elsewhere
across the spectrum of contemporary economics. A contemporary “Veblenian”
approach is taken, for example, in recent works by Malcolm Rutherford and Lars
Magnusson in which radical knowledge requirements demand a serious modifi-
cation or negation of predictive economic theory. It is equally non-scientific in
these manifestations.

Her proclivities for moral theology are revealed when she opines that a role
of Austrian economics (and Austrian economists) might be to provide a “philo-
sophical conscience of the economics profession.” Continuing, she notes that
“this may not be a bad thing: Lord knows, economics needs some kind of
conscience, but itis also true that most people are not particularly fond of having
a conscience, despite the fact that they may be better off with one than without”
(p- 167). Does Vaughn pretend to know what conscience is or what matters
should be matters of conscience? Perhaps economists are not particularly fond

of having half-baked theology served up to them either.


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138 Review of Austrian Economics 10, No.2 (1997)

this book’s simplistic treatment. Indeed, other reviews of this book
(by Austrians) have noted some of these areas. Fortunately, it repre-
sents a small, angst-ridden wing of the Austrian movement—those
with a penchant for internecine methodological warfare—and not its
more vital quarters. A number of young Austrians really do economics
and interesting economics at that. Austrian-flavored analyses of mone-
tary theory, macroeconomic and growth theory, antitrust, and law and
economics are being promulgated by writers such as George Selgin,
Larry White and Don Boudreaux, to mention only a few. And Israel
Kirzner continues to enlarge our knowledge and analysis of the role
of the entrepreneur. Perhaps someday soon, an Austrian will provide
a work that reveals the real complexity of the area without the
Heraclitan highjinks and theological overtones that pervade this
treatment.

Robert B. Ekelund, Jr.
Auburn University