The volume is a unique attempt to explore the relationship between two of the most interesting contemporary schools of thought evolving at the interface between social science and social philosophy: The Austrian tradition of F A Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, and the Bloomington tradition of Elinor Ostrom and Vincent Ostrom.

The chapters in this volume explore, engage and expand on the key thinkers and ideas of the Austrian, Virginia, and Bloomington schools of political economy. The book emphasizes the continuing relevance of the contributions of these schools of thought to our understanding of cultural, social, moral and historical processes for interdisciplinary research in the social sciences and humanities. An analysis of human action that deliberate divorces it from cultural, social, moral and historical processes will (at least) limit and (at worst) distort our understanding of human phenomena. The diversity in topics and approaches will make the volume of interest to readers in a variety of fields, including: anthropology, communications, East Asian languages & literature, economics, law, musicology, philosophy, and political science.

Volume 19 includes research by scholars working within Austrian political economy. The contributors shed incisive light on a range of topics in Austrian economics including: the role of culture in post-disaster recovery, class structure, decentralized political orders, drones, institutional change, macroeconomics, and superstition and norms.

Challenging Institutional Analysis and Development demonstrates the importance of one of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics winners Elinor Ostrom's research program. The Bloomington School has become one of the most dynamic, well recognized and productive centers of the New Institutional Theory movement. Its ascendancy is considered to be the result of a unique and extremely successful combination of interdisciplinary theoretical approaches and hard-nosed empiricism. This book demonstrates that the well-known interdisciplinary and empirical agenda of the Bloomington Research Program is the result of a less-known but very bold proposition: an attempt to revitalize and extend into the new millennium a traditional mode of analysis illustrated by authors like Locke, Montesquieu, Hume, Adam Smith, Hamilton, Madison and Tocqueville. As such, the School tries to synthesize the traditional perspectives with the contemporary developments in social sciences and thus to re-ignite the old approach in the new intellectual and political context of the twentieth century. The book presents an outline and a systematic analysis of the vision behind the Bloomington Research Program in Institutional Analysis and Development, explaining its basic assumptions and its main themes as well as the foundational philosophy that frames its research questions and theoretical and methodological approaches. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of social science, especially those in the fields of economics, political sciences, sociology and public administration.

Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises, was one of the most original and controversial economists of the 20th century, both as a defender of free-market liberalism and a leading opponent of socialism and the interventionist-welfare state. He was both the grant designer of a political economy of freedom and a trenchant, detailed critic of government regulatory and monetary policies in the first half of the 20th century. This fascinating book explores the cultural currents of anti-Semitism in Austria before and after the First World War that Mises confronted as an Austrian Jew; his analysis of Austria-Hungary’s establishment of a gold standard; Mises’ multi-sided activities in the years after the World War I in stemming a hyperinflation, opposing government fiscal mismanagement, and resisting misguided policies during the Great Depression; and his analysis of how Europe plunged into World War II and the policies to restore freedom and prosperity in the post-war period. It also discusses the confrontation between the Austrian Economists and the Keynesians over the causes and cures for the Great Depression, as well as how Mises’ "Austrian" approach to money and the business cycle contrasted with both the ideas of Joseph A. Schumpeter and the Swedish Economists of the interwar period. This volume breaks new ground in placing Ludwig von Mises’ many original views on political economy, public policy and monetary economics in the historical context of his time, especially during the interwar period when he was a senior economic analyst for the Vienna Chamber of Commerce and after his arrival in America during World War II. The book will therefore be of interest to students and researchers in monetary economics, political economy, expectations theory and the market process, and the history of economic thought.

In addition to winning the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for her path-breaking research on “economic governance, especially the commons,” Elinor (Lin) Ostrom also made important contributions to other fields of political economy and public policy. This four-volume compendium of papers written by Lin (often with coauthors, most notably her husband, Vincent), along with papers by others expanding on her work, brings together the strands of her entire empirical, analytical, theoretical, and methodological research program. Together with Vincent’s important theoretical contributions, they defined a distinctive “Bloomington School” of political-economic thought. Volume 3 collects explores the historical development of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, illustrates its application to a wide range of specific policy problems, and highlights recent extensions that ensure it will remain a vibrant focus of research for years to come. The IAD framework emerged from a long series of interdisciplinary collaborative research projects, but the guiding figure in its development was Elinor Ostrom. Anyone familiar with the full range of her research will recognize common presuppositions and themes for which she used the IAD framework as an organizing device. This book collects examples of policy-relevant applications of IAD to a wide range of policy sectors. In a fundamental sense, the IAD framework helps us understand how Ostrom’s mind worked when she approached a particular problem of policy, and it highlights those factors that she asserted needed to be considered in any complete analysis. Unfortunately, she did not leave us a complete or definitive guidebook on how to apply this framework. This volume collects important components of such a guidebook from a wide range of sources, including previously unpublished papers, and as such it should help anyone seeking to use this framework to analyze a variety of policy areas.

Here, leading economists explore whether Austrian economics is still relevant today. Starting with Peter Boettke’s lead essay, “What is Wrong with Austrian Economics?”, chapters include an array of perspectives responding to this question, ranging from economics, to intellectual history, to political science, and to philosophy.