https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_school_of_economics
Criticism
edit
General
edit
Mainstream economists generally reject modern-day Austrian economics, and argue that modern-day Austrian economists are too unwilling to use mathematics and statistics in economics.[84] The Austrian Economics school is a small group involving largely online Libertarians, with not much academic support and mainstream economists disagree with many of the views its adherents accept.[85] The Austrian School publishes few articles in mainstream journals because they lack testable hypotheses in their propositions.[86] The Austrian economists also publish relatively little in mainstream journals because they rarely use mathematics.[81] Austrian opposition to mathematization extends to economic theorizing only, as they argue that human behavior is too variable for overarching mathematical models to hold true across time and context. Austrians do, however, support analyzing revealed preference via mathematization to aid business and finance.[87]
Economist Paul Krugman has stated that Austrians are unaware of holes in their own thinking because they do not use "explicit models".[88] In reality during a recession a strong negative multiplier effect reduces output in all parts of the economy.[89]
Economist Benjamin Klein has criticized the economic methodological work of Austrian economist Israel M. Kirzner. While praising Kirzner for highlighting shortcomings in traditional methodology, Klein argued that Kirzner did not provide a viable alternative for economic methodology.[90] Economist Tyler Cowen has written that Kirzner's theory of entrepreneurship can ultimately be reduced to a neoclassical search model and is thus not in the radical subjectivist tradition of Austrian praxeology. Cowen states that Kirzner's entrepreneurs can be modeled in mainstream terms of search.[91]
Economist Bryan Caplan has noted that Mises has been criticized for overstating the strength of his case in describing socialism as "impossible" rather than as something that would need to establish non-market institutions to deal with the inefficiency.[92]
Taxation and welfare
edit
Economist Jeffrey Sachs argues that among developed countries, those with high rates of taxation and high social welfare spending perform better on most measures of economic performance compared to countries with low rates of taxation and low social outlays. He concludes that Friedrich Hayek was wrong to argue that high levels of government spending harm an economy and "a generous social-welfare state is not a road to serfdom but rather to fairness, economic equality and international competitiveness".[93] Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden promote industrial flexibility by public sector education and retraining to eliminate declining industries. These nations also do research and development and create new sectors. Nordic nations have higher employment rates than the English speaking nations.[94]
Austrian economists can at most maintain it is impossible to determine the effects of government on "social utility". Some people lose while the intervener gains, therefore one cannot make claims over social utility without comparing interpersonal welfare, which Austrian economics denies is possible. If state action cannot be endorsed through claiming efficiency logically state action cannot be denied either claiming efficiency. Austrian economics at most leads to total uncertainty over possible benefits of statism.[81]
They don’t like using math to do economics