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This textbook is based upon a philosophical method of logical deduction from basic principles such as scarcity, individual choice and subjectivism. This textbook attempts to show that all complex phenomena of economic theory such as prices of consumer goods and factors of production, saving and consumption, interest and profit, can be explained by the same primitive psychological principles of scarcity and substitution on the margin that could be used to describe economizing Robinson Crusoe on a desert island or two cavemen catching fish or exchanging apples for oranges. This textbook distils the essence of economic science prevailing in price theory before the 1930s, which the authors' argue is superior to currently popular mainstream theory into a readable and student-friendly textbook format.
This is an introductory textbook written in the tradition of Menger, Bohm-Bawerk, Mises and Hayek, instead in the tradition of Alfred Marshall and John Maynard Keynes, as almost all modern textbooks are. The authors offer a text not predicated on physics envy; on an attempt to liken economics to the physical sciences, on the basis of "empirical evidence", statistics and verification.
List of contents
Chapter 1. What is Economics?.- Chapter 2. Exchange and Demand.- Chapter 3. Determination of Prices.- Chapter 4. Capital, Interest and Production.- Chapter 5. Prices of Factors of Production.- Chapter 6. Money and the Business Cycle.- Chapter 7. Competition and Entrepreneurship.- Chapter 8. Competition and Monopoly.- Chapter 9. Theory of the Firm.- Chapter 10. Free Trade and Protectionism.- Chapter 11. Price Controls.- Chapter 12. Theories of Market Failure.- Chapter 13. Government Failure and Public Choice.- Chapter 14. Economics of Discrimination.- Chapter 15. Political Economy of Risk Management.
About the author
Walter E. Block is Harold E. Wirth Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics, College of Business, Loyola University New Orleans, and senior fellow at the Mises Institute. He earned his PhD in economics at Columbia University in 1972. He has taught at Rutgers, SUNY Stony Brook, Baruch CUNY, Holy Cross and the University of Central Arkansas. He is the author of more than 650 refereed articles in professional journals, almost three dozen books, and thousands of op eds. He lectures widely on college campuses, delivers seminars around the world and appears regularly on television and radio shows. He is the Schlarbaum Laureate, Mises Institute, 2011; and has won the Loyola University Research Award (2005, 2008) and the Mises Institute's Rothbard Medal of Freedom, 2005; and the Dux Academicus award, Loyola University, 2007.
Ivan Jankovic is Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota, USA. His background is in economic theory and the history of political and economic ideas. His previous book "Mengerian Microeconomics: The Forgotten Anglo-American Contribution to the Austrian School" was published by Palgrave in 2020.
