Austrian economics waxed and waned across decades in America

Evidence

First ignored and then defeated in Europe, Austrian ideas survived in America, where their popularity has ebbed and flowed for nearly a century. Although battered and beaten-down by the Keynesian revolution after World War II, Austrian ideas never quite disappeared from the American scene. They staged something of a comeback in the 1970s when Hayek was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics and served as a popular justification for Reagan’s supply-side policies, but they disappeared again until the current crisis brought them back to the fore. Why this reappearance? The answer lies in what they said about banks. — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 385

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘why this reappearance… what they said about banks’ hook bridges directly into the 2008-crisis austerity narrative central to Mattei and the broader austerity literature. — connects to: Austrian business-cycle theory has a submerged US history dating to the 1920s via Schumpeter — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 397; Austrian economics found its influential home in the United States, not Europe. — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 381; Key Austrian works failed commercially while Keynesianism dominated economics — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 384
• QUESTION: The tantalizing claim that Austrian ideas about banks drove their 2008 revival sets up a thesis worth verifying against the later policy history.

Broader Connections

• Key Austrian works failed commercially while Keynesianism dominated economics #corroborates (0.85) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 384