Austrian economics originated as a reaction against state-led development

Evidence

In the late nineteenth century, Austrian economics emerged in the Austro-Hungarian Empire from the debate over the role the state might play in fostering economic development following Germany’s state-led growth spurt. The key figure here was Carl Menger, one of the first of the so-called marginalist economists, who saw economic value as a question of subjective utility and relative prices, rather than as a function of costs of production. More important for our purposes, he was also dead against the state being involved in helping capitalism along the way. Megner started a “methodological debate” (Methodenstreit) with members of Germany’s Historical school of economics over these matters that led the Germans to label Menger and his followers “the Austrian school.” — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 382

Categorization

• XREF: Foundational context for the intellectual-history chain leading to Mattei and the austerity debates Blyth is building toward. — connects to: Austrian theory holds that government intervention, not markets, causes boom-bust cycles — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 316; Austrian economics constituted the original reactionary rejection of state-managed liberalism — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 315; Austrian economics redirected antitrust critique from firm monopoly to state and union restrictions — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 280 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Austrian economics redirected antitrust critique from firm monopoly to state and union restrictions #expands (0.82) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 280
• Austrian economic readings converted Lippmann against planned economies by 1937 #exemplifies (0.80) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 154
• Austrian liberals of the 1920s sought to translate economic theory into policy guidance #expands (0.78) — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 178
• Development economics emerged as a heterodox discipline that traditional neoclassical economists opposed #qualifies (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1262