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{{Economic Waves}} {{Short description|Economic theory}}
{{Austrian School sidebar |expanded=Theory}} {{Austrian School sidebar|expanded=all}}
The '''Austrian business cycle theory''' ("'''ABCT'''") attempts to explain ] through a set of ideas held by the ] ] of economics. The theory views business cycles (or, as some ] prefer, "]s") as the inevitable consequence of excessive growth in ] ], exacerbated by inherently damaging and ineffective ] policies, which cause ]s to remain too low for too long, resulting in excessive ] creation, speculative ]s and lowered savings.<ref>, Thorsten Polleit, 13 December 2007.</ref><ref>, G.R. Steele</ref>


The '''Austrian business cycle theory''' ('''ABCT''') is an economic theory developed by the ] of economics seeking to explain how ] occur. The theory views business cycles as the consequence of excessive growth in bank ] due to artificially low interest rates set by a central bank or fractional reserve banks.<ref>, Thorsten Polleit, 13 December 2007.</ref> The Austrian business cycle theory originated in the work of Austrian School economists ] and ]. Hayek won the ] in 1974 (shared with ]) in part for his work on this theory.<ref name="Woods, Jr. 2007 174–179">{{cite book |title=33 Questions about American History You're Not Supposed to Ask |last= Woods, Jr.|first= Thomas|year= 2007|publisher= ]|location=New York |isbn=978-0-307-34668-1 |pages=174–179 |chapter=22:Did Capitalism Cause the Great Depression?}}</ref><ref name="nobelprize.org">{{Cite web|url=https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1974/press-release/|title=The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1974|website=NobelPrize.org}}</ref><ref name="displaystory2006">{{cite news |url=https://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_GRSRVJS |title=The weeds of destruction |access-date=2008-10-08 |newspaper=Economist |date=2006-05-04}}</ref>
Austrians believe that a sustained period of low interest rates and excessive ] results in a volatile and unstable imbalance between saving and investment.<ref name="displaystory2006">{{cite news |url=http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_GRSRVJS |title=The weeds of destruction |accessdate=2008-10-08 |publisher=Economist |date=2006-05-04}}</ref> According to the theory, the business cycle unfolds in the following way: Low interest rates tend to stimulate borrowing from the banking system. This expansion of credit causes an expansion of the ], through the ] process in a ] system. This in turn leads to an unsustainable credit-sourced boom during which the artificially stimulated borrowing seeks out diminishing investment opportunities. This credit-sourced boom results in widespread malinvestments, causing ] resources to be misallocated into areas that would not attract investment if the ] remained stable. A correction or "]"&nbsp;– commonly called a "]" or "bust"&nbsp;– occurs when ] credit creation cannot be sustained. Then the ] suddenly and sharply contracts when markets finally "clear", causing resources to be reallocated back towards more efficient uses.


According to the theory, the business cycle unfolds in the following way: low interest rates tend to stimulate borrowing, which lead to an increase in capital spending funded by newly issued bank credit. Proponents hold that a credit-sourced boom results in widespread ]. A correction or ], commonly called a "]" or "bust", occurs when the credit creation has run its course. The ] then contracts (or its growth slows), causing a curative recession and eventually allowing resources to be reallocated back towards their former uses.
Given these perceived damaging and disruptive effects caused by what Austrian scholars believe to be volatile and unsustainable growth in ] ], many proponents (such as ]) advocate either heavy regulation of the banking system (strictly enforcing a policy of ] on the ]) or, more often, ].<ref>, Frank Shostak</ref> The main proponents of the Austrian business cycle theory historically were ] and ]. Hayek won a Nobel Prize in economics in 1974 (shared with ]) in part for his work on this theory.<ref>{{cite book |title=33 Questions about American History You're Not Supposed to Ask |last= Woods, Jr.|first= Thomas|year= 2007|publisher= ]|location=New York |isbn=978-0-307-34668-1 |pages=174–179 |chapter=22:Did Capitalism Cause the Great Depression?}}</ref><ref></ref>


The Austrian explanation of the business cycle varies significantly from the ] understanding of business cycles, and is generally rejected by mainstream economists. Economists such as ],<ref name="Friedman1969">{{cite book |last=Friedman |first=Milton |title=The Optimal Quantity of Money and Other Essays |publisher=Aldine |location=Chicago |pages=261–284 |chapter=The Monetary Studies of the National Bureau, 44th Annual Report}}</ref><ref name="Friedman93">{{cite journal |last=Friedman |first=Milton |title=The 'Plucking Model' of Business Fluctuations Revisited |journal=Economic Inquiry |pages=171–177}}</ref> ],<ref name="Tullock1988">{{cite journal |author=Gordon Tullock |title=Why the Austrians are wrong about depressions |journal=The Review of Austrian Economics |volume=2 |issue=1 |year=1988 |pages=73–78 |format=PDF |url=http://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/RAE2_1_4.pdf |accessdate=2009-06-24 |doi=10.1007/BF01539299}}</ref> ],<ref name="Caplan">{{cite web |url=http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/01/whats_wrong_wit_6.html |title=What's Wrong With Austrian Business Cycle Theory |last=Caplan |first=Bryan |date=2008-01-02 |publisher=Library of Economics and Liberty |accessdate=2008-07-28}}</ref> and ]<ref name="Krugman">{{cite web |url=http://www.slate.com/id/9593 |title=The Hangover Theory |last=Krugman |first=Paul |date=1998-12-04 |publisher=Slate |accessdate=2008-06-20}}</ref> have said that they regard the theory as incorrect. Further, the Austrian school's methods of deriving theories have been criticized by mainstream economists as ''a priori'' "non-empirical" analysis<ref name="tremble"> The Austrian explanation of the business cycle differs significantly from the ] understanding of business cycles and is generally rejected by mainstream economists.<ref name=Friedman1969/><ref name="Friedman93"/><ref name="Krugman">{{cite magazine |url=http://www.slate.com/id/9593 |title=The Hangover Theory |last=Krugman |first=Paul |date=1998-12-04 |magazine=Slate |access-date=2008-06-20| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080706173751/http://www.slate.com/id/9593| archive-date= 6 July 2008 <!--DASHBot-->|url-status = live}}</ref><ref name="Hummel">{{cite journal|last1=Hummel|first1=Jeffrey Rogers|title=Problems with Austrian business cycle theory|journal=Reason Papers|date=Winter 1979|issue=5|url=http://www.reasonpapers.com/pdf/05/rp_5_4.pdf |pages=41–53|access-date=2017-05-27}}</ref> Austrian School theorists have continued to contest these conclusions.<ref>{{Cite web|last=kanopiadmin|date=2011-01-20|title=My Reply to Krugman on Austrian Business-Cycle Theory|url=https://mises.org/library/my-reply-krugman-austrian-business-cycle-theory|access-date=2020-12-28|website=Mises Institute|language=en}}</ref>
{{cite journal
|first=Paul A.
|last=Samuelson
|title=Theory and Realism: A Reply
|publisher=American Economic Association
|journal=The American Economic Review
|month=Sep
|year=1964
|pages=736–739
|quote=Well, in connection with the exaggerated claims that used to be made in
economics for the power of deduction and a priori reasoning ..... – I tremble for the reputation of my subject. Fortunately, we have left that behind us.}}
</ref> and differing from the practices of ], as widely conducted in economics.<ref>
{{cite journal
|first=Thomas
|last=Mayer
|title=Boettke's Austrian critique of mainstream economics: An empiricist's response
|publisher=Routledge
|journal=Critical Review
|month=Winter
|year=1998
|pages=151–171}}
</ref><ref name="white1">
{{Citation
|title=The research program of Austrian economics
|publisher=Emerald Group Publishing Limited
|first=Lawrence H.
|last=White
|journal=Advances in Austrian Economics
|year=2008
|pages=20
}}
</ref><ref name="Caplan">{{cite web|url=http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/whyaust.htm|title=Why I Am Not an Austrian Economist |last=Caplan |first=Bryan |publisher=] |accessdate=2008-07-04 | quote=Mises and Rothbard however err when they say that economic history can only illustrate economic theory. In particular, empirical evidence is often necessary to determine whether a theoretical factor is quantitatively significant...Austrians reject econometrics on principle because economic theory is true a priori, so statistics or historical study cannot "test" theory. }}
</ref>


== Origin == == Mechanism ==
=== Malinvestment and boom ===
The trade cycle argument first appeared in the last few pages of ]'s '']'' (1912). This early development of Austrian business cycle theory was a direct manifestation of Mises's rejection of the concept of ] and emerged as an almost incidental by-product of his exploration of the theory of banking. ] has observed in a chapter on the theory that the origins lie in the ideas of ].<ref>Laider D. (1999). ''Fabricating the Keynesian Revolution''. Cambridge University Press. .</ref>{{rp|27}}
According to ABCT, in a genuinely free market random bankruptcies and business failures will always occur at the margins of an economy, but should not "cluster" unless there is a ''widespread'' mispricing problem in the economy that triggers simultaneous and cascading business failures.<ref name="ReferenceA">'']'', ]</ref> According to the theory a period of widespread and synchronized "]" is caused by mis-pricing of interest rates thereby causing a period of widespread and excessive business lending by ]s, and this credit expansion is later followed by a sharp contraction and period of distressed asset sales (liquidation) which were purchased with overleveraged debt.<ref name="ReferenceA"/><ref name="mises">Theory of Money and Credit, Ludwig von Mises, Part III, Part IV</ref> The initial expansion is believed to be caused by ] encouraging excessive lending and borrowing at interest rates below what full reserve banks would demand. Due to the availability of relatively inexpensive funds, entrepreneurs invest in capital goods for more roundabout, "longer process of production" technologies such as “high tech” industries. Borrowers take their newly acquired funds and purchase new capital goods, thereby causing an increase in the proportion of aggregate spending allocated to “high tech” ] rather than basic ] such as food. However, such a shift is inevitably unsustainable over time due to mispricing caused by excessive credit creation by the banks and must reverse itself eventually as it is always unsustainable. The longer this distorting dislocation continues, the more violent and disruptive will be the necessary re-adjustment process.


Austrian School theorists argue that a boom taking place under these circumstances is actually a period of wasteful ]. "Real" savings would have required higher ] to encourage depositors to save their money in term deposits to invest in longer-term projects under a stable money supply. The artificial stimulus caused by bank lending causes a generalized speculative investment bubble which is not justified by the long-term factors of the market.<ref name="mises"/>
Austrian economist ] explains the origins of the theory:


=== Bust ===
<blockquote>
The "]" (or "]") arrives when the consumers come to reestablish their desired allocation of saving and consumption at prevailing interest rates.<ref name="Human Action"/><ref name="mises.org">, Thorsten Polleit, 13 December 2007</ref> The "recession" or "depression" is actually the process by which the economy adjusts to the wastes and errors of the monetary boom, and reestablishes efficient service of sustainable consumer desires.<ref name="Human Action"/><ref name="mises.org"/>{{nonspecific|date=January 2013}}
Grounded in the economic theory set out in ]'s '']'' and built on the vision of a capital-using production process developed in ]'s '']'', the Austrian theory of the business cycle remains sufficiently distinct to justify its national identification. But even in its earliest rendition in ]' '']'' and in subsequent exposition and extension in ]'s ''Prices and Production'', the theory incorporated important elements from Swedish and British economics. ]'s ''Interest and Prices'', which showed how prices respond to a discrepancy between the bank rate and the real rate of interest, provided the basis for the Austrian account of the misallocation of ] during the boom. The market process that eventually reveals the intertemporal misallocation and turns boom into bust resembles an analogous process described by the ], in which international misallocations induced by credit expansion are subsequently eliminated by changes in the terms of trade and hence in ] flow.<ref>Garrison, Roger. In ''Business Cycles and Depressions''. David Glasner, ed. New York: Garland Publishing Co., 1997, pp. 23-27. </ref>
</blockquote>


Continually expanding bank credit can keep the artificial credit-fueled boom alive (with the help of successively lower interest rates from the ]). This postpones the "day of reckoning" and defers the collapse of unsustainably inflated asset prices.<ref name="Human Action"/><ref name="goldensextant.com">, Robert K. Landis, 21 August 2004</ref>
A popularized version of the theory is presented in ]'s pamphlet ''Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure'', which endeavors to explain the business cycle by focusing on excessive bank-sourced credit expansion and centralized government intervention (through the actions of a ]).<ref name="Rothbard_Causes">Murray N.Rothbard. , '''' Compiled by Richard M. Ebeling, referenced 2009-05-28. "So now we see, at last, that the business cycle is brought about, not by any mysterious failings of the free market economy, but quite the opposite: By systematic intervention by government in the market process. Government intervention brings about bank expansion and inflation, and, when the inflation comes to an end, the subsequent depression-adjustment comes into play."</ref> Rothbard went into much greater detail in his book '']''.


The monetary boom ends when bank credit expansion finally stops, i.e. when no further investments can be found which provide adequate returns for speculative borrowers at prevailing interest rates. The longer the "false" monetary boom goes on, the bigger and more speculative the borrowing, the more wasteful the errors committed and the longer and more severe will be the necessary bankruptcies, foreclosures, and depression readjustment.<ref name="Human Action"/>
=== Questions ===
The Austrian business cycle theory attempts to answer the following questions about things which Austrian theorists, notably ], believe appear during the ]:<ref>, Murray Rothbard</ref>
* Why is there a sudden general cluster of business errors?
* Why do ]s industries and asset market prices fluctuate more widely than do the ]s industries and consumer prices?
* Why is there a general increase in the quantity of money in the economy during every boom, and why is there generally, though not universally, a fall in the ] during the depression (or a sharp contraction in the growth of ] in a recession)?


=== Government policy error ===
== Assertions ==
Austrian business cycle theory does not argue that fiscal restraint or "austerity" will necessarily increase economic growth or result in immediate recovery.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> Rather, they argue that the alternatives (generally involving central government bailing out banks and companies and individuals favoured by the government of the day) will make eventual recovery more difficult and unbalanced. All attempts by central governments to prop up asset prices, bail out insolvent banks, or "stimulate" the economy with deficit spending will only make the misallocations and malinvestments more acute and the economic distortions more pronounced, prolonging the depression and adjustment necessary to return to stable growth, especially if those stimulus measures substantially increase government debt and the long term debt load of the economy.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> Austrians argue the policy error rests in the government's (and central bank's) weakness or negligence in allowing the "false" unsustainable credit-fueled boom to begin in the first place, not in having it end with fiscal and monetary "austerity". Debt liquidation and debt reduction is therefore the only solution to a debt-fueled problem. The opposite - getting even further into debt to spend the economy's way out of crisis - cannot logically be a solution to a crisis caused by too much debt.<ref name="ReferenceB">, David S. D'Amato</ref><ref name="reason.com">, Tim Cavanaugh</ref> More government or private debt solving a debt-related problem is logically impossible.<ref name="ReferenceB"/><ref name="reason.com"/>
According to the theory, the boom-bust cycle of malinvestment is generated by excessive and unsustainable credit expansion to businesses and individual borrowers by the ]s.<ref name="econlib.org">, Ludwig von Mises, Part III, Part IV</ref> This ] makes it appear as if the supply of "saved funds" ready for investment has increased, for the effect is the same: the supply of funds for investment purposes increases, and the ] is lowered.<ref name="The Mystery of Banking"/> Borrowers, in short, are misled by the bank ] into believing that the supply of saved funds (the pool of "deferred" funds ready to be invested) is greater than it really is. When the pool of "saved funds" increases, entrepreneurs invest in "longer process of production," i.e., the capital structure is lengthened, especially in the "higher orders", most remote from the consumer. Borrowers take their newly acquired funds and bid up the prices of capital and other producers' goods, which, in the theory, stimulates a shift of investment from consumer goods to capital goods industries. Austrians further contend that such a shift is unsustainable and must reverse itself in due course. Despite mainstream findings of evidence to the contrary,<ref name="Friedman93" /> proponents of the theory conclude that the longer the unsustainable shift in capital goods industries continues, the more violent and disruptive the necessary re-adjustment process. While agreeing with economist Tyler Cowen, Bryan Caplan has stated that he also denies "that the artificially stimulated investments have any tendency to become malinvestments."<ref name="caplan_abct">
{{Cite web
| first = Bryan
| last = Caplan
| title = What's Wrong With Austrian Business Cycle Theory
| publisher = Liberty Fund, Inc.
| date = February 12, 2009
| url = http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/01/whats_wrong_wit_6.html
| format = news
| accessdate = 2010-05-17}}
</ref>


According to ], "here is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of the voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved".<ref name="Human Action">, Ludwig von Mises, Chapter XX, section 8</ref>
The preference by entrepreneurs for longer term investments in a low interest rate environment can be shown graphically by using any ] model. Essentially lower ] increase the relative value of cash flows that come in the future. When modeling an investment opportunity, if ] are artificially low, entrepreneurs are led to believe the income they will receive in the future is sufficient to cover their near term investment costs.<ref>, Thorsten Polleit, 13 December 2007.</ref> In simple terms, investments that would not make sense with a 10% cost of funds become feasible with a prevailing interest rate of 5% (and may become compelling for many entrepreneurs with a prevailing interest rate of 2%).<ref>, Thorsten Polleit, 13 December 2007.</ref>


== The role of central banks ==
The proportion of ] to saving or investment is determined by people's ]s, which is the degree to which they prefer present to future satisfactions. In a stable money environment<ref>, John Cochran, March 19, 2003</ref> the interest rate is the price signal reflecting the balance of consumption and saving. If the goods and services presently on offer encourage people to spend, interest rates will be higher, reflecting people's short-term time preferences. If the goods and services presently on offer do not encourage people to spend, interest rates will be lower, reflecting people's desire to save their money (and spend their money on goods and services in the future). Thus, the pure interest rate in a stable money environment<ref>, John Cochran, March 19, 2003</ref> is determined by the time preferences of the individuals in society, and the final market rates of interest reflect the pure interest rate plus or minus the entrepreneurial risk and purchasing power components.<ref>, Ludwig von Mises, Part II</ref>
{{see also|Inverted yield curve}}
Austrian School theorists generally argue that inherently damaging and ineffective central bank policies, including unsustainable expansion of bank credit through ], are the predominant cause of most business cycles, as they tend to set artificial interest rates too low for too long, resulting in excessive credit creation, speculative "]", and artificially low savings.<ref>Thorsten Polleit, , 13 December 2007</ref> Under ] systems, a ] creates new money when it lends to member banks, and this money is multiplied many times over through the ] process of the private ]s. This new bank-created money enters the loan market and provides a lower rate of interest than that which would prevail if the ] were stable.<ref name="mises"/><ref name="The Mystery of Banking"> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141216200653/http://library.freecapitalists.org/books/Jesus%20Huerta%20de%20Soto/The%20Mystery%20of%20Banking.pdf |date=2014-12-16 }}, Murray Rothbard, 1983</ref>


== History ==
In an environment where the money supply is continually expanding through the issuance of credit, interest rates no longer reflect people's time preferences, as interest rates are set by the ].<ref>, John Cochran, March 19, 2003</ref> Because the debasement of the ] in a low interest rate environment is universal, many entrepreneurs can make the same mistake at the same time (i.e. many believe investment funds are really available for long term projects when in fact the pool of available funds has come from credit creation - not real savings out of the existing money supply). As they are all competing for the same pool of capital and market share, some entrepreneurs begin to borrow simply to avoid being "overrun" by other entrepreneurs who may take advantage of the lower interest rates to invest in more up-to-date capital infrastructure. Mises conjectures that a tendency towards over-investment and speculative borrowing in this "artificial" low interest rate environment is therefore almost inevitable.<ref name="econlib.org"/>
A similar theory appeared in the last few pages of Mises's '']'' (1912). This early development of Austrian business cycle theory was a direct manifestation of Mises's rejection of the concept of ] and emerged as an almost incidental by-product of his exploration of the theory of banking. ] has observed in a chapter on the theory that the origins lie in the ideas of ].<ref>Laider D. (1999). ''Fabricating the Keynesian Revolution''. Cambridge University Press. .</ref>


Nobel laureate Hayek's presentation of the theory in the 1930s was criticized by many economists, including ], ] and ]. In 1932, ] argued that Hayek's theory did not explain why "forced savings" induced by inflation would generate investments in capital that were inherently less sustainable than those induced by voluntary savings.<ref name="Sraffa1932">{{cite journal |author=Piero Sraffa | title=Dr. Hayek on Money and Capital | jstor=2223735 | journal=Economic Journal | volume=42 | issue=March | year=1932 | pages=42–53 |doi=10.2307/2223735}}</ref> Sraffa also argued that Hayek's theory failed to define a single "natural" rate of interest that might prevent a period of growth from leading to a crisis.<ref name="Sraffa1932" /> Others who responded critically to Hayek's work on the business cycle included ], ] and ].<ref name="Caldwell">], ''Hayek's Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F. A. Hayek'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), p. 179. {{ISBN|0-226-09193-7}}</ref> Hayek reformulated his theory in response to those objections.
This new money then percolates downward from the business borrowers to the factors of production: to the landowners and capital owners who sold assets to the newly indebted ], and then to the other factors of production in wages, rent, and interest. Austrian economists conclude that, since time preferences have not changed, people will rush to reestablish the old proportions, and demand will shift back from the higher to the lower orders. In other words, depositors will tend to remove cash from the banking system and spend it (not save it), banks will then ask their borrowers for payment and, Austrians contend that interest rates and credit conditions will deteriorate.<ref name="econlib.org"/>


Austrian School economist ] explains the origins of the theory: <blockquote>Grounded in the economic theory set out in Carl Menger's ''Principles of Economics'' and built on the vision of a capital-using production process developed in Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk's ''Capital and Interest'', the Austrian theory of the business cycle remains sufficiently distinct to justify its national identification. But even in its earliest rendition in Mises's ''Theory of Money and Credit'' and in subsequent exposition and extension in F. A. Hayek's ''Prices and Production'', the theory incorporated important elements from Swedish and British economics. Knut Wicksell's ''Interest and Prices'', which showed how prices respond to a discrepancy between the bank rate and the real rate of interest, provided the basis for the Austrian account of the misallocation of ] during the boom. The market process that eventually reveals the intertemporal misallocation and turns boom into bust resembles an analogous process described by the British Currency School, in which international misallocations induced by credit expansion are subsequently eliminated by changes in the terms of trade and hence in specie flow.<ref>Garrison, Roger. In ''Business Cycles and Depressions''. ], ed. New York: Garland Publishing Co., 1997, pp. 23–27. </ref></blockquote>
Austrian economists theorize that entrepeneurs in capital goods industries will find that their investments have been in error; that what they thought profitable really fails for lack of demand by their entrepreneurial customers.<ref>, John Cochran, March 19, 2003</ref> Higher orders of production will have turned out to be wasteful, and the malinvestment must be liquidated.<ref name="Human Action">, Ludwig von Mises, p.572</ref>


Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek were two of the few economists who gave warning of a major economic crisis before ] of 1929.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Making of Modern Economics |url=https://archive.org/details/makingofmodernec0000skou |url-access=registration |last=Skousen |first=Mark |author-link=Mark Skousen |year=2001 |publisher=M.E. Sharpe |isbn=978-0-7656-0479-8 |page= }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1974/press.html |title=The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1974 |access-date=2008-10-12 |publisher=Nobel Foundation |date=1974-10-09 }}</ref> In February 1929, Hayek warned that a coming financial crisis was an unavoidable consequence of reckless monetary expansion.<ref>{{cite book |title= Keynes and Hayek |url= https://archive.org/details/keyneshayekmoney00stee |url-access= limited |last= Steele |first=G. R. |year=2001 |publisher= Routledge |isbn= 978-0-415-25138-9 |page= }}</ref>
This concept is captured by the term "heterogeneity of capital",<ref>, Foss and Klein</ref> where Austrian economists emphasize that the mere macroeconomic "total" of investment does not adequately capture whether this investment is genuinely sustainable or productive, due the inability of the raw numbers to reveal the particular investment activities being undertaken and the inherent inability of the numbers to reveal whether these particular investment activities were appropriate and economically sustainable given people's real preferences.<ref>, G.R. Steele</ref>


Austrian School economist ] argued in the wake of the ] that the Federal Reserve was making a mistake by not allowing consumer prices to fall. According to him, the Fed's policy of reducing interest rates to below-market-level when there was a chance of deflation in the early 2000s together with government policy of subsidizing homeownership resulted in unwanted asset inflation. Financial institutions ] up to increase their returns in the environment of below market interest rates. Boettke further argues that government regulation through ] enabled financial institutions to act irresponsibly and invest in securities that would perform only if the prices in the housing market continued to rise. However, once the interest rates went back up to the market level, prices in the housing market began to fall and soon afterwards financial crisis ensued. Boettke attributed the failure to policy makers who assumed that they had the ] to make positive interventions in the economy. The Austrian School view is that government attempts to influence markets prolong the process of needed adjustment and reallocation of resources to more productive uses. In this view bailouts serve only to distribute wealth to the well-connected, while long-term costs are borne out by the majority of the ill-informed public.<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703418004575455911922562120 | work=The Wall Street Journal | title=Spreading Hayek, Spurning Keynes | date=2010-08-28}}</ref><ref>Boettke, Peter J. and Luther, William J., The Ordinary Economics of an Extraordinary Crisis (2010). MACROECONOMIC THEORY AND ITS FAILINGS: ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVE ON THE WORLD FINANCIAL CRISIS, Steven Kates, ed., Edward Elgar Publishing . Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1529570</ref>
Though disputed,<ref name="caplan_abct" /> Austrian scholars assert that the boom, then, is actually a period of wasteful malinvestment, a "false boom" where the particular kinds of investments undertaken during the period of fiat money expansion are revealed to lead nowhere but to insolvency and unsustainability. It is the time when errors are made, when speculative borrowing has driven up prices for assets and capital to unsustainable levels, due to low interest rates "artificially" increasing the ] and triggering an unsustainable injection of ] "funds" available for investment into the system, thereby tampering with the complex pricing mechanism of the ]. "Real" savings would have required higher ] to encourage depositors to save their money in term deposits to invest in longer term projects under a stable money supply. The artificial stimulus caused by bank-created credit causes a generalized speculative investment bubble, not justified by the long-term structure of the market.<ref name="econlib.org"/>


Economist ] identifies the ] as the direct outcome of the Federal Reserve Bank's interest rate policies as is predicted by the Austrian business cycle theory.<ref>{{cite web |url= https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/feds-modus-operandi-panic |title=The Fed's Modus Operandi: Panic |first=Steve H. |last=Hanke |work=cato.org |access-date=21 April 2020 | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20100716084209/http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10100| archive-date= 16 July 2010 <!--DASHBot-->|url-status = live|date=2009-03-18 }}</ref> ] Jerry Tempelman has also argued that the predictive and explanatory power of ABCT in relation to the global financial crisis has reaffirmed its status and perhaps cast into question the utility of mainstream theories and critiques.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Tempelman |first1=Jerry |title=Austrian Business Cycle Theory and the Global Financial Crisis: Confessions of a Mainstream Economist |url=https://mises.org/library/austrian-business-cycle-theory-and-global-financial-crisis-confessions-mainstream-economist |website=Mises Institute |date=30 July 2014 |access-date=21 April 2020}}</ref>
Mises further suggests that a "]" (or "]") arrives when the consumers come to reestablish their desired allocation of saving and consumption at prevailing interest rates.<ref name="Human Action"/><ref name="mises.org"/> The "recession" or "depression" is actually the process by which the economy adjusts to the wastes and errors of the monetary boom, and reestablishes efficient service of sustainable consumer desires.<ref name="Human Action"/><ref name="mises.org"/>
Since it takes very little time for the new credit-sourced money to filter down from the initial borrowers to the recipients of the borrowed funds (the various factors of production),<ref>'']'', ]</ref> why don't all booms come quickly to an end? The theory's proponents state that continually expanding bank credit can keep the borrowers one step ahead of consumer retribution (with the help of successively lower interest rates from the ]). This postpones the "day of reckoning" and defers the collapse of unsustainably inflated asset prices.<ref name="Human Action"/><ref name="goldensextant.com">, Robert K. Landis, 21 August 2004</ref> It can also be temporarily put off by exogenous events such as the "cheap" or free acquisition of marketable resources by market participants and the banks funding the borrowing (such as the acquisition of land from local governments, or in extreme cases, the acquisition of foreign land through the waging of war).<ref>, Lew Rockwell</ref>


== Empirical research ==
Austrian scholars theorize that the monetary boom ends when bank credit expansion finally stops - when no further investments can be found which provide adequate returns for speculative borrowers at prevailing interest rates. It is asserted that the longer the "false" monetary boom goes on, the bigger and more speculative the borrowing, the more wasteful the errors committed and the longer and more severe will be the necessary bankruptcies, foreclosures and depression readjustment.<ref name="Human Action"/>, though Milton Friedman concluded that the Austrian claim contradicts the evidence examined in his studies.<ref name=Friedman1969/><ref name="Friedman93"/> There is also a notion of capital consumption contributing negatively to the readjustment period, which has been discussed in works such as '']''.<ref name="Human Action">, Ludwig von Mises, Chp. 18</ref>
Empirical economic research findings are inconclusive, with different economic schools of thought arriving at different conclusions. In 1969, Nobel laureate ] found the theory to be inconsistent with empirical evidence.<ref>Friedman, Milton. "Monetary Studies of the National Bureau." from ''The National Bureau Enters Its 45th Year, 44th Annual Report'', 1964, pp.7-25; reprinted in ''The Optimal Quantity of Money and Other Essays'', Ch. 12, pp.261-84. Chicago: Aldine, 1969.</ref> Twenty five years later in 1993, he reanalyzed the question using newer data, and reached the same conclusion.<ref>Friedman, Milton. "The 'Plucking Model' of Business Fluctuations Revisited". Economic Inquiry: 171–177.</ref> However, in 2001, Austrian School economist James P. Keeler argued that the theory is consistent with empirical evidence.<ref name="springerlink.com">{{cite journal | last1 = Keeler | first1 = JP. | year = 2001 | title = Empirical Evidence on the Austrian Business Cycle Theory | journal = Review of Austrian Economics | volume = 14 | issue =4 | pages = 331–351|doi=10.1023/A:1011937230775 | s2cid = 18902379 }}</ref> Economists Francis Bismans and Christelle Mougeot arrived at the same conclusion in 2009.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Bismans|first1=Francis|last2=Mougeot|first2=Christelle|date=2009-09-01|title=Austrian business cycle theory: Empirical evidence|journal=The Review of Austrian Economics|language=en|volume=22|issue=3|pages=241–257|doi=10.1007/s11138-009-0084-6|s2cid=154765597|issn=1573-7128}}</ref>


According to some economic historians, economies have experienced less severe boom-bust cycles after World War II, because governments have addressed the problem of economic recessions.<ref name="Quiggin"/><ref name="Eckstein ">{{cite book|last=Eckstein |first=Otto |author-link=Otto Eckstein|author2=Allen Sinai |title=The American Business Cycle: Continuity and Change|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/americanbusiness0000gord |chapter-url-access=registration |editor=Robert J. Gordon |publisher=University of Chicago Press|year=1990|chapter=1. The Mechanisms of the Business Cycle in the Postwar Period|isbn=9780226304533 }}</ref><ref name="Chatterjee ">{{cite journal|last=Chatterjee |first=Satyajit |year=1999|title=Real business cycles: a legacy of countercyclical policies?|journal=Business Review|issue=January 1999|pages=17–27|url=https://ideas.repec.org/cgi-bin/ref.cgi?handle=RePEc:fip:fedpbr:y:1999:i:jan:p:17-27&output=0}}</ref><ref name="Walsh ">{{cite journal|url=http://www.frbsf.org/econrsrch/wklyltr/wklyltr99/el99-16.html|title=Changes in the Business Cycle|last=Walsh |first=Carl E. |date=May 14, 1999|journal=FRBSF Economic Letter|access-date=2008-09-16| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080907173315/http://www.frbsf.org/econrsrch/wklyltr/wklyltr99/el99-16.html| archive-date= 7 September 2008 <!--DASHBot-->|url-status = live}}</ref> Many have argued that this has especially been true since the 1980s because central banks were granted more independence and started using ] to stabilize the business cycle, an event known as ].<ref>{{cite journal|last=Stock|first=James|author2=Mark Watson|title=Has the business cycle changed and why?|journal=NBER Macroeconomics Annual|volume=17|pages=159–218|year=2002|url=https://www.nber.org/chapters/c11075.pdf|doi=10.1086/ma.17.3585284}}</ref> However, Austrian economists argue the opposite, that boom-bust cycles following the creation of the Federal Reserve have been more frequent and more severe than those prior to 1913.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://mises.org/library/seventeen-years-boom-and-bust|title=Seventeen Years of Boom and Bust|last=kanopiadmin|date=2012-02-20|website=Mises Institute|language=en|access-date=2020-02-17}}</ref>
]<ref>{{cite book |title=The Making of Modern Economics |last=Skousen |first=Mark |authorlink=Mark Skousen |year=2001 |publisher=M.E. Sharpe |isbn=0765604795 |page=284 }}</ref> and ]<ref>{{cite web |url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1974/press.html |title=The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1974 |accessdate=2008-10-12 |publisher=] |date=1974-10-09 }}</ref> warned of a major economic crisis before the ]. Hayek made his prediction of a coming business crisis in February 1929. He warned that a financial crisis was an unavoidable consequence of reckless monetary expansion.<ref>{{cite book |title= Keynes and Hayek |last= Steele |first=G. R. |year=2001 |publisher= Routledge |isbn= 0415251389 |page=9 }}</ref>


== Reactions of economists and policymakers ==
===The role of central banks===
According to ], ]'s work on the Austrian business cycle theory had at first "fascinated the academic world of economists" but attempts to fill in the gaps in theory led to the gaps appearing "larger, instead of smaller" until ultimately "one was driven to the conclusion that the basic hypothesis of the theory, that scarcity of capital causes crises, must be wrong".<ref name="Kaldor1942">{{cite journal | author=Nicholas Kaldor| title=Professor Hayek and the Concertina-Effect| journal=Economica| volume=9 | issue=36 | year=1942 | pages=359–382 | jstor=2550326 | doi=10.2307/2550326 }}</ref>


], who had embraced the Austrian theory of the business cycle in ''The Great Depression'' (1934), later regretted having written that book and accepted many of the Keynesian counterarguments.<ref name="Garrison">R. W. Garrison, , ''Hayek Society Journal'' (LSE), '''5'''(2), 1 (2003).</ref>
All Austrian theorists consider the unsustainable expansion of bank credit through ] as the driving feature of most business cycles. However, Murray Rothbard paid particular attention to the role of central banks in creating an environment of loose credit prior to the onset of the ], and the subsequent ineffectiveness of central bank policies, which simply delayed necessary price adjustments and prolonged market dysfunction.<ref>'']'', ]</ref> Rothbard begins with the claim that in a market with no centralized monetary authority, there would be no simultaneous cluster of malinvestments or entrepreneurial errors, since astute ]s would not all make errors at the same time and would quickly take advantage of any temporary, isolated mispricing. In addition, in an ], non-centralized (uninsured) capital market, astute bankers would shy away from speculative lending and uninsured depositors would carefully monitor the balance sheets of risky financial institutions, tempering any speculative excesses that arose sporadically in the finance markets. In Rothbard's view, the cycle of ''generalized'' malinvestment is greatly exacerbated by ''centralized'' monetary intervention in the money markets by the ]. Such propositions from Rothbard prompted criticism from Bryan Caplan, who questions "Why does Rothbard think businessmen are so incompetent at forecasting government policy? He credits them with entrepreneurial foresight about all market-generated conditions, but curiously finds them unable to forecast government policy, or even to avoid falling prey to simple accounting illusions generated by inflation and deflation... Particularly in interventionist economies, it would seem that natural selection would weed out businesspeople with such a gigantic blind spot."<ref name="caplan_abct" />


The Nobel Prize Winner ] was a proponent of Austrian business cycle theory and their perspective on the Great Depression and often quoted ] and ].<ref>See pp. 728–731, Jesus Huerta de Soto(1998)</ref>
However, Rothbard asserts that an over-encouragement to borrow and lend is initiated by the mispricing of credit via the ]'s ''centralized'' control over interest rates and its need to protect banks from periodic ] (which Austrian economists believe then causes interest rates to be set too low for too long when compared to the rates that would prevail in a genuine non-] dominated ]).<ref name="econlib.org"/><ref name="mises.org">, Thorsten Polleit, 13 December 2007</ref>


When, in 1937, the ] examined the causes of and solutions to business cycles, the Austrian business cycle theory alongside the ] and ] were the three main theories examined.<ref>Prosperity and Depression (1937)</ref>
Under the current ] system, a ] creates new money when it lends to member banks, and this money is multiplied many times over through the ] process of the private ]s. This new bank-created money enters the loan market and provides a lower rate of interest than that which would prevail if the ] were stable.<ref name="econlib.org"/><ref name="The Mystery of Banking">, Murray Rothbard, 1983</ref>

== Financial crisis of 2007–2010 ==
Economist ] in 2005 said that Austrian business cycle theory should be refocused to result in a viable synthesis of Keynesian and Hayekian theories.<ref name="tylercowen">, Marginal Revolution, ], February 26, 2005</ref> In 2005 Cowen also said that if he believed in Austrian business cycle theory he would say that U.S. economy is overinvested in housing and a massive shock (sectoral shift toward exports) will result.<ref>http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/01/if_i_believed_i.html </ref> After the ] began its decline in 2006, ], a supporter of the Austrian school, made some predictions<ref>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoZV5jt9puc"</ref> regarding a housing crash in the US, though (as of early 2009) Schiff's investment firm had not been able to profit from strategies based on his predictions.<ref>http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/business/hancock/blog/2009/01/schiff_firm_shedlock_exaggerat.html</ref><ref>http://seekingalpha.com/article/116694-peter-schiff-s-euro-pacific-capital-down-40-70-in-2008</ref>

The ] has resulted in a revival of interest in the Austrian business cycle theory <ref>http://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/18532.html</ref>, but has also resulted in a revival of interest of theories more critical of Austrian theory, such as Keynesianism and ].<ref>http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2007/06/25/amid-financial-excess-a-revival-of-austrian-economics-in-basel/</ref>


== Similar theories == == Similar theories ==
The Austrian theory is considered one of the precursors to the modern ] theory,<ref name=Eichengreen2003/> which is emphasized by ], economists at the ], and by a few mainstream academics such as ] and ]. These two emphasize asymmetric information and agency problems. (], another precursor,<ref name=Eichengreen2003/> emphasized the negative impact of speculative increases in the value of land, which places a heavy burden of mortgage payments on consumers and companies.<ref name=Eichengreen2003>Eichengreen B, Mitchener K. (2003). . BIS Working Paper No. 137.</ref><ref> - from www.henrygeorge.org</ref>) The Austrian theory is considered one of the precursors to the modern ] theory, which is emphasized by ], economists at the ]. These two emphasize asymmetric information and agency problems. ], another precursor, emphasized the negative impact of speculative increases in the value of land, which places a heavy burden of mortgage payments on consumers and companies.<ref name=Eichengreen2003>Eichengreen B, Mitchener K. (2003). . BIS Working Paper No. 137.</ref><ref> from www.henrygeorge.org</ref>


A different theory of credit cycles is the ] theory of ].
A different theory of credit cycles is the ] theory of ], which is today placed in the Post-Keynesian tradition. The difference between these may be stated as debt-deflation being a ''demand''-side theory, which emphasizes the period ''after'' the peak – the end of a ] and contraction of debt causing a fall in '']'' – while the Austrian theory is a ''supply''-side theory, which emphasizes the period ''before'' the peak – the growth of debt during the growth phase causing malinvestment. The theories may thus be seen as complementary, addressing different aspects of the issue, and are so-considered by some economists.<ref name="tylercowen" /><ref>For example, ] first emphasizes the credit bubble and debt-deflation, but also points to financialization (the ]), citing parts of the Austrian tradition approvingly.</ref>


In 2003 ] laid out modern credit boom theory as a cycle in which loans increase as the economy expands, particularly where regulation is weak, and through these loans money supply increases. Inflation remains low, however, because of either a pegged exchange rate or a supply shock, and thus the central bank does not tighten credit and money. Increasingly speculative loans are made as ] lead to reduced yields. Eventually inflation begins or the economy slows, and when asset prices decline, a bubble is pricked which encourages a macroeconomic bust.<ref name=Eichengreen2003/> In 2003, ] laid out a credit boom theory as a cycle in which loans increase as the economy expands, particularly where regulation is weak, and through these loans' money supply increases. However, inflation remains low because of either a pegged exchange rate or a supply shock, and thus the central bank does not tighten credit and money. Increasingly speculative loans are made as ] lead to reduced yields. Eventually inflation begins or the economy slows, and when asset prices decline, a bubble is pricked which encourages a macroeconomic bust.<ref name=Eichengreen2003/>


In 2006 ] argued that "financial liberalization has increased the likelihood of boom-bust cycles of the Austrian sort".<ref name=White2006/> While White conceded that the status quo policy had been successful in reducing the impacts of busts, he commented that the view on inflation should perhaps be longer term and that the excesses of the time seemed dangerous.<ref name=White2006>{{cite paper |last=White |first=William |authorlink=William White (economist)|title=Is price stability enough? |publisher=] |date=April 2006 |url=http://www.bis.org/publ/work205.pdf |format=PDF |accessdate=2008-10-08}}</ref> In addition, White believes that the Austrian explanation of the business cycle might be relevant once again in an environment of excessively low interest rates. According to the theory, a sustained period of low interest rates and excessive credit creation results in a volatile and unstable imbalance between saving and investment.<ref name="displaystory2006"/><ref name="White2006"/> In 2006, ] argued that "financial liberalization has increased the likelihood of boom-bust cycles of the Austrian sort" and he has later argued the "near complete dominance of Keynesian economics in the post-world war II era" stifled further debate and research in this area.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=White |first=William R. |author-link=William White (economist) |date=August 2012 |title=Ultra Easy Monetary Policy and the Law of Unintended Consequences |url=https://www.dallasfed.org/assets/documents/institute/wpapers/2012/0126.pdf |url-status=dead |journal=Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Globalization Institute Working Papers |issue=126 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120911055702/https://www.dallasfed.org/assets/documents/institute/wpapers/2012/0126.pdf |archive-date=2012-09-11 |via=Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas}}</ref><ref name=White2006/> While White conceded that the status quo policy had been successful in reducing the impacts of busts, he commented that the view on inflation should perhaps be longer term and that the excesses of the time seemed dangerous.<ref name="White2006">{{cite journal |last=White |first=William |author-link=William White (economist) |date=17 April 2006 |title=Is price stability enough? |url=http://www.bis.org/publ/work205.pdf |journal=BIS Working Papers |publisher=] |issue=205 |doi=10.2139/ssrn.900074 |ssrn=900074 |access-date=2008-10-08 |via=Bank for International Settlements}}</ref> In addition, White believes that the Austrian explanation of the business cycle might be relevant once again in an environment of excessively low interest rates. According to the theory, a sustained period of low interest rates and excessive credit creation results in a volatile and unstable imbalance between saving and investment.<ref name="displaystory2006"/><ref name="White2006"/>


== Related policy proposals ==
However, the explanations offered by these credit cycle theories do not depend on an ideological opposition to central banking, in the way that Austrian theory does.
Economists ],<ref>{{Cite web |date=2012-05-08 |title=Written Testimony by Jeffrey M. Herbener Professor of Economics Grove City College Before the Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology Committee on Financial Services U.S. House of Representatives |url=https://financialservices.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hhrg-112-ba19-wstate-jherbener-20120508.pdf |website=U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee}}</ref> ],<ref name="financialservices.house.gov">{{Cite web |date=2012-05-08 |title=Klein, Peter Disclosure |url=https://financialservices.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hhrg-112-ba19-ttf-pklein-20120508.pdf |website=U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee}}</ref> ]<ref name="financialservices.house.gov"/> and John P. Cochran<ref>{{Cite web |date=2012-06-28 |title=Testimony before the Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology Committee on Financial Services U. S. House of Representatives "Fractional Reserve Banking and Central Banking as Sources of Economic Instability: The Sound Money Alternative" |url=https://financialservices.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hhrg-112-ba19-wstate-jcochran-20120628.pdf |website=U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee}}</ref> have testified before Congressional Committee about the beneficial results of moving to either a ] system or a free ] system based on ] based on insights from Austrian business cycle theory.


== Empirical research == == Criticisms ==
According to ], most economists believe that the Austrian business cycle theory is incorrect because of its incompleteness and other problems.<ref name="Quiggin">{{cite web |url= http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2009/05/03/austrian-business-cycle-theory/ |title=John Quiggin " Austrian Business Cycle Theory |work=johnquiggin.com |access-date=19 July 2010 |date=2009-05-02 }}</ref> Economists such as ] and ],<ref name="Friedman1969">{{cite book |last=Friedman |first=Milton |title=The Optimal Quantity of Money and Other Essays |publisher=Aldine |location=Chicago |pages=261–284 |chapter=The Monetary Studies of the National Bureau, 44th Annual Report}}</ref><ref name="Friedman93">{{cite journal |last=Friedman |first=Milton |s2cid=55910769 |title=The 'Plucking Model' of Business Fluctuations Revisited |journal=Economic Inquiry |volume=31 |issue=2 |pages=171–177 |doi=10.1111/j.1465-7295.1993.tb00874.x|year=1993 }}</ref> ],<ref name="Tullock1988">{{cite journal |author=Gordon Tullock |title=Why the Austrians are wrong about depressions |journal=The Review of Austrian Economics |volume=2 |issue=1 |year=1988 |pages=73–78 |url=https://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/RAE2_1_4.pdf |access-date=2009-06-24 |doi=10.1007/BF01539299|s2cid=143583608 }}</ref> ],<ref name="Caplan">{{cite web|url=http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/whyaust.htm|title=Why I Am Not an Austrian Economist |last=Caplan |first=Bryan |publisher=] |access-date=2017-05-27 }}</ref> and ],<ref name="Krugman"/> have also criticized the theory.


=== Theoretical objections ===
In 1969, Nobel Laureate ], after examining the history of business cycles in the US, concluded that "The Hayek-Mises explanation of the business cycle is contradicted by the evidence. It is, I believe, false."<ref name=Friedman1969/> He analyzed the issue using newer data in 1993, and again reached the same conclusions.<ref name="Friedman93"/>
Some economists argue that the Austrian business cycle theory requires bankers and investors to exhibit a kind of irrationality, because their theory requires bankers to be regularly fooled into making unprofitable investments by temporarily low interest rates.<ref name="Tullock1988"/> In response, historian ] argues that few bankers and investors are familiar enough with the Austrian business cycle theory to consistently make sound investment decisions. Austrian School economists Anthony Carilli and Gregory Dempster argue that a banker or firm loses market share if it does not borrow or loan at a magnitude consistent with current interest rates, regardless of whether rates are below their natural levels. Thus businesses are forced to operate as though rates were set appropriately, because the consequence of a single entity deviating would be a loss of business.<ref name="Austrian Economics 2008, pages 271–281">The Review of Austrian Economics, 2008, vol. 21, issue 4, pages 271–281</ref> Austrian School economist Robert Murphy argues that it is difficult for bankers and investors to make sound business choices because they cannot know what the interest rate would be if it were set by the market.<ref name="https://mises.org/daily/3466">{{cite web|author=Robert P. Murphy |url=https://mises.org/daily/3466 |title=Correcting Quiggin on Austrian Business-Cycle Theory – Robert P. Murphy – Mises Daily |publisher=Mises.org |date= 2009-05-14|access-date=2012-08-15}}</ref> Austrian economist ] argues that widespread knowledge of the Austrian business cycle theory increases the amount of malinvestment during periods of artificially low interest rates.<ref>{{cite web|author=Sean Rosenthal |url=https://mises.org/daily/6068/When-Anticipation-Makes-Things-Worse |title=When Anticipation Makes Things Worse – Sean Rosenthal – Mises Daily |publisher=Mises.org |date= 2012-05-25|access-date=2012-08-15}}</ref>


In a 1998 interview, Milton Friedman expressed dissatisfaction with the policy implications of the theory:
In 2001, Austrian economist James P. Keeler stated that the hypotheses of the theory are consistent with his preliminary empirical research.<ref>Keeler JP. (2001). . ''Review of Austrian Economics'' '''14''' (4).</ref>
:I think the Austrian business-cycle theory has done the world a great deal of harm. If you go back to the 1930s, which is a key point, here you had the Austrians sitting in London, Hayek and Lionel Robbins, and saying you just have to let the bottom drop out of the world. You’ve just got to let it cure itself. You can’t do anything about it. You will only make it worse. You have Rothbard saying it was a great mistake not to let the whole banking system collapse. I think by encouraging that kind of do-nothing policy both in Britain and in the United States, they did harm.<ref>Interview in Barron's Magazine, Aug. 24, 1998 archived at Hoover Institution {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131231213357/http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/6459|date=2013-12-31}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | first=Gene | last=Epstein | url=http://www.barrons.com/articles/SB903738915698011000 | title=Mr. Market | work=Barron's | date=1998-08-24 | access-date=2017-08-16}}</ref>


== Critiques == === Empirical objections ===
Jeffery Rogers Hummel argues that the Austrian explanation of the business cycle fails on empirical grounds. In particular, he notes that investment spending remained positive in all recessions where there are data, except for the ]. He argues that this casts doubt on the notion that recessions are caused by a reallocation of resources from industrial production to consumption, since he argues that the Austrian business cycle theory implies that net investment should be below zero during recessions.<ref name="Hummel"/> In response, Austrian School economist ] argues that the misallocation during booms does not preclude the possibility of demand increasing overall.<ref>"On Hummel on Austrian Business Cycle Theory"], William Barnett II and Walter Block. Reason Papers 30 (2008): 59-90.</ref>
The Austrian theory of the business cycle is now rarely discussed by mainstream economists, but was more actively debated in the mid-20th century.<ref name=OnLaidler>Block W, Barnett II W. (2007). . ''Review of Austrian Economics''.</ref> Nobel laureate Hayek's formulation of the theory in the 1930s was harshly criticized by ], ] and ]. In 1932, ] argued that Hayek's formulation of the business cycle required a kind of money that was entirely neutral, and was in effect a simple commodity, unable to act as a store of value or be loaned at interest.<ref name="Sraffa1932">{{cite journal | author=Pierro Sraffa| title=Dr. Hayek on Money and Capital | journal=Economic Journal (reprinted in Hayek 1995)| volume=42 | issue=March | year=1932 | pages=42–53}}</ref> Hayek reformulated his theory in response to those objections, but his reformulation was then criticised by ] in 1939 <ref name="Kaldor1939">{{cite journal | author=Nicholas Kaldor| title=Capital Intensity and the Trade Cycle| journal=Economica| volume=6 | issue=21 | year=1939 | pages=40–66 | doi=10.2307/2549077 }}</ref> and again in 1942.


In 1969, economist ], after examining the history of business cycles in the U.S., concluded that the Austrian Business Cycle was false.<ref name=Friedman1969/> He analyzed the issue using newer data in 1993, and again reached the same conclusion.<ref name="Friedman93"/> Austrian economist ] claims that Friedman has not proven his conclusion because he focuses on the contraction of GDP being as high as the previous contraction, but that the theory "establishes a correlation between credit expansion, microeconomic malinvestment and recession, not between economic expansion and recession, both of which are measured by an aggregate (GDP)" and that the empirical record shows strong correlation.<ref>p. 495 (de Soto 1998)</ref>
More recently, mainstream economists like Nobel laureate ],<ref name="Friedman1969"/><ref name="Friedman93"/> ],<ref name="Tullock1988"/> ],<ref name="Caplan"/> and ]<ref name="Krugman"/> have stated that they regard the theory as incorrect. Bryan Caplan has stated that he denies "that the artificially stimulated investments have any tendency to become malinvestments."<ref name="caplan_abct">
{{Cite web
| first = Bryan
| last = Caplan
| title = What's Wrong With Austrian Business Cycle Theory
| publisher = Liberty Fund, Inc.
| date = February 12, 2009
| url = http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/01/whats_wrong_wit_6.html
| format = news
| accessdate = 2010-05-17}}
</ref> ] views the theory as motivated by the political leanings of its major proponents, as Austrian economists are known for their strong opposition to government involvement in the economy, and argues that the theory was discredited because of its association with "nihilistic policy prescriptions" for the Great Depression. On the other hand, Laidler also stated that its core insights were materially worthwhile, especially as related to the work of ].<ref>Laidler D. '', p. 11. ] discussion paper.</ref>


Referring to Friedman's discussion of the business cycle, Austrian economist ] stated that "Friedman's empirical findings are broadly consistent with both Monetarist and Austrian views" and goes on to argue that although Friedman's model "describes the economy's performance at the highest level of aggregation; Austrian theory offers an insightful account of the market process that might underlie those aggregates".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Garrison |first=Roger W. |author-link=Roger Garrison |date=October 1996 |title=Friedman's 'Plucking Model' |url=https://webhome.auburn.edu/~garriro/fm1pluck.htm |journal=Economic Inquiry |volume=34 |issue=4 |pages=799–802 |via=Auburn University}}</ref><ref>Milton Friedman, "The 'Plucking Model' of Business Fluctuations Revisited" Economic Inquiry April, 1993</ref>
In 1988 ] explained his disagreement with the theory.<ref name="Tullock1988"/> His main point is that "if the process that Rothbard describes did occur, there would be many corporate bankruptcies and business people jumping out of the windows of office buildings, but there would be only minor transitional unemployment. In fact, measured GNP would be higher as a result." This is because the Austrian theory implies fluctuations in investment, but not in the production decisions of firms. Nobel laureate ] also made a similar argument when he stated that the theory implies that consumption would increase during downturns and cannot explain the empirical observation that spending in ''all sectors'' of the economy falls during a recession,<ref name="Krugman"/>.

Mainstream economists argue that the theory requires bankers and investors to exhibit a kind of irrationality – that they be regularly fooled into making unprofitable investments by temporarily low interest rates.<ref name="Tullock1988"/><ref name="Caplan"/>

Critics have also argued that, as the theory points to the actions of fractional-reserve banks and central banks to explain business cycles, it fails to explain the existence of business cycles before the establishment of ] in 1913. For example, the ] would initiate the ] in US and much of Europe. Additionally, there were also severe market crashes in the United States of the magnitude of the ] in ], ], ], ], ], and ]; there was no central bank or national monetary policy in the US during these crises. In fact, the movement to establish central banking in the United States was in part a response to the business cycle, particularly the ].
<ref name="Frank_Bernanke">{{cite book |last1=Frank |first1=Robert H. |last2=Bernanke |first2=Ben S. |title=Principles of Macroeconomics |publisher= McGraw-Hill/Irwin|year=2007 |edition=3rd |page=284 |isbn=0073193976 |volume= |url= |accessdate= |location=Boston }}</ref>

Mainstream economists believe that economies have experienced less severe boom-bust cycles after World War II, since central banks have started using ] to stabilize economies<ref name="Eckstein ">{{cite book|last=Eckstein |first=Otto |authorlink=Otto Eckstein|coauthors=Allen Sinai |title=The American Business Cycle: Continuity and Change|editor=Robert J. Gordon |publisher=University of Chicago Press|date=1990|chapter=1. The Mechanisms of the Business Cycle in the Postwar Period}}</ref><ref name="Chatterjee ">{{cite journal|last=Chatterjee |first=Satyajit |date=1999|title=Real business cycles: a legacy of countercyclical policies?|journal=Business Review.|publisher=Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia |issue=January 1999|pages=17–27|url=http://ideas.repec.org/cgi-bin/ref.cgi?handle=RePEc:fip:fedpbr:y:1999:i:jan:p:17-27&output=0}}</ref><ref name="Walsh ">{{cite web|url=http://www.frbsf.org/econrsrch/wklyltr/wklyltr99/el99-16.html|title=Changes in the Business Cycle|last=Walsh |first=Carl E. |date=May 14, 1999|work=FRBSF Economic Letter|publisher=Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco|accessdate=2008-09-16}}</ref> – see especially ].

=== Notable Responses ===

With regards to the criticism which concludes that the Austrian Business Cycle theory requires widespread irrationality about the future of interest rates,<ref name="Tullock1988"/><ref name="Caplan"/> Austrian thinkers Carilli and Dempster have offered a response. They have argued that a ] framework can explain the apparent failure of investors to learn from previous experience.<ref>Carilli AM, Dempster GM. (2001). . ''Review of Austrian Economics''.</ref>

In response to several severe economic crashes that occurred without a central bank, historian ] argues in his book '']'' that the crashes were caused by various privately-owned banks (with state charters) which issued paper money, supposedly convertible to gold, in amounts greatly exceeding their gold reserves.<ref name="Woods">{{cite book |last=Woods |first=Thomas E., Jr. |title=Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse |publisher=Regnery Publishing, Inc. |year=2009 |edition=1st |page=88–94 |isbn=9781596985872 }}</ref>


== See also == == See also ==
* '']'' by ] * '']'' by ]
* ]
* '']'' by Ludwig von Mises
* ]
* ]'s "Minsky Credit Cycle" and "]"
* ] by ]


== References == == References ==
{{reflist|colwidth=30em}} {{reflist|colwidth=30em}}

== Further reading ==
* ] (2009). '']: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse''. Washington, DC: Regnery. {{ISBN|978-1596985872}} {{OCLC|276335198}}
* Evans, A. J. (2010), "What Austrian Business Cycle Theory Does and Does Not Claim as True. ], 30: 70–71. {{doi|10.1111/j.1468-0270.2010.02025.x}},
* ] (2000). ''Time and Money: The Macroeconomics of Capital Structure''. New York: Routledge. {{ISBN|0415771226}}


== External links == == External links ==
*
*
* , ]
*
*
*
*
*
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* {{Cite book |last1=Garrison |first1=Roger |contribution=The Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle |title=Business Cycles and Depressions |publisher=Garland Publishing Co. |year=1997 |contribution-url=http://www.auburn.edu/~garriro/a1abc.htm}} * {{Cite book |last1=Garrison |first1=Roger |contribution=The Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle |title=Business Cycles and Depressions |publisher=Garland Publishing Co. |year=1997 |contribution-url=http://www.auburn.edu/~garriro/a1abc.htm}}


{{DEFAULTSORT:Austrian Business Cycle Theory}} {{DEFAULTSORT:Austrian Business Cycle Theory}}
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Latest revision as of 13:02, 5 August 2024

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The Austrian business cycle theory (ABCT) is an economic theory developed by the Austrian School of economics seeking to explain how business cycles occur. The theory views business cycles as the consequence of excessive growth in bank credit due to artificially low interest rates set by a central bank or fractional reserve banks. The Austrian business cycle theory originated in the work of Austrian School economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Hayek won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974 (shared with Gunnar Myrdal) in part for his work on this theory.

According to the theory, the business cycle unfolds in the following way: low interest rates tend to stimulate borrowing, which lead to an increase in capital spending funded by newly issued bank credit. Proponents hold that a credit-sourced boom results in widespread malinvestment. A correction or credit crunch, commonly called a "recession" or "bust", occurs when the credit creation has run its course. The money supply then contracts (or its growth slows), causing a curative recession and eventually allowing resources to be reallocated back towards their former uses.

The Austrian explanation of the business cycle differs significantly from the mainstream understanding of business cycles and is generally rejected by mainstream economists. Austrian School theorists have continued to contest these conclusions.

Mechanism

Malinvestment and boom

According to ABCT, in a genuinely free market random bankruptcies and business failures will always occur at the margins of an economy, but should not "cluster" unless there is a widespread mispricing problem in the economy that triggers simultaneous and cascading business failures. According to the theory a period of widespread and synchronized "malinvestment" is caused by mis-pricing of interest rates thereby causing a period of widespread and excessive business lending by banks, and this credit expansion is later followed by a sharp contraction and period of distressed asset sales (liquidation) which were purchased with overleveraged debt. The initial expansion is believed to be caused by fractional reserve banking encouraging excessive lending and borrowing at interest rates below what full reserve banks would demand. Due to the availability of relatively inexpensive funds, entrepreneurs invest in capital goods for more roundabout, "longer process of production" technologies such as “high tech” industries. Borrowers take their newly acquired funds and purchase new capital goods, thereby causing an increase in the proportion of aggregate spending allocated to “high tech” capital goods rather than basic consumer goods such as food. However, such a shift is inevitably unsustainable over time due to mispricing caused by excessive credit creation by the banks and must reverse itself eventually as it is always unsustainable. The longer this distorting dislocation continues, the more violent and disruptive will be the necessary re-adjustment process.

Austrian School theorists argue that a boom taking place under these circumstances is actually a period of wasteful malinvestment. "Real" savings would have required higher interest rates to encourage depositors to save their money in term deposits to invest in longer-term projects under a stable money supply. The artificial stimulus caused by bank lending causes a generalized speculative investment bubble which is not justified by the long-term factors of the market.

Bust

The "crisis" (or "credit crunch") arrives when the consumers come to reestablish their desired allocation of saving and consumption at prevailing interest rates. The "recession" or "depression" is actually the process by which the economy adjusts to the wastes and errors of the monetary boom, and reestablishes efficient service of sustainable consumer desires.

Continually expanding bank credit can keep the artificial credit-fueled boom alive (with the help of successively lower interest rates from the central bank). This postpones the "day of reckoning" and defers the collapse of unsustainably inflated asset prices.

The monetary boom ends when bank credit expansion finally stops, i.e. when no further investments can be found which provide adequate returns for speculative borrowers at prevailing interest rates. The longer the "false" monetary boom goes on, the bigger and more speculative the borrowing, the more wasteful the errors committed and the longer and more severe will be the necessary bankruptcies, foreclosures, and depression readjustment.

Government policy error

Austrian business cycle theory does not argue that fiscal restraint or "austerity" will necessarily increase economic growth or result in immediate recovery. Rather, they argue that the alternatives (generally involving central government bailing out banks and companies and individuals favoured by the government of the day) will make eventual recovery more difficult and unbalanced. All attempts by central governments to prop up asset prices, bail out insolvent banks, or "stimulate" the economy with deficit spending will only make the misallocations and malinvestments more acute and the economic distortions more pronounced, prolonging the depression and adjustment necessary to return to stable growth, especially if those stimulus measures substantially increase government debt and the long term debt load of the economy. Austrians argue the policy error rests in the government's (and central bank's) weakness or negligence in allowing the "false" unsustainable credit-fueled boom to begin in the first place, not in having it end with fiscal and monetary "austerity". Debt liquidation and debt reduction is therefore the only solution to a debt-fueled problem. The opposite - getting even further into debt to spend the economy's way out of crisis - cannot logically be a solution to a crisis caused by too much debt. More government or private debt solving a debt-related problem is logically impossible.

According to Ludwig von Mises, "here is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of the voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved".

The role of central banks

See also: Inverted yield curve

Austrian School theorists generally argue that inherently damaging and ineffective central bank policies, including unsustainable expansion of bank credit through fractional reserve banking, are the predominant cause of most business cycles, as they tend to set artificial interest rates too low for too long, resulting in excessive credit creation, speculative "bubbles", and artificially low savings. Under fiat monetary systems, a central bank creates new money when it lends to member banks, and this money is multiplied many times over through the money creation process of the private banks. This new bank-created money enters the loan market and provides a lower rate of interest than that which would prevail if the money supply were stable.

History

A similar theory appeared in the last few pages of Mises's The Theory of Money and Credit (1912). This early development of Austrian business cycle theory was a direct manifestation of Mises's rejection of the concept of neutral money and emerged as an almost incidental by-product of his exploration of the theory of banking. David Laidler has observed in a chapter on the theory that the origins lie in the ideas of Knut Wicksell.

Nobel laureate Hayek's presentation of the theory in the 1930s was criticized by many economists, including John Maynard Keynes, Piero Sraffa and Nicholas Kaldor. In 1932, Piero Sraffa argued that Hayek's theory did not explain why "forced savings" induced by inflation would generate investments in capital that were inherently less sustainable than those induced by voluntary savings. Sraffa also argued that Hayek's theory failed to define a single "natural" rate of interest that might prevent a period of growth from leading to a crisis. Others who responded critically to Hayek's work on the business cycle included John Hicks, Frank Knight and Gunnar Myrdal. Hayek reformulated his theory in response to those objections.

Austrian School economist Roger Garrison explains the origins of the theory:

Grounded in the economic theory set out in Carl Menger's Principles of Economics and built on the vision of a capital-using production process developed in Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk's Capital and Interest, the Austrian theory of the business cycle remains sufficiently distinct to justify its national identification. But even in its earliest rendition in Mises's Theory of Money and Credit and in subsequent exposition and extension in F. A. Hayek's Prices and Production, the theory incorporated important elements from Swedish and British economics. Knut Wicksell's Interest and Prices, which showed how prices respond to a discrepancy between the bank rate and the real rate of interest, provided the basis for the Austrian account of the misallocation of capital during the boom. The market process that eventually reveals the intertemporal misallocation and turns boom into bust resembles an analogous process described by the British Currency School, in which international misallocations induced by credit expansion are subsequently eliminated by changes in the terms of trade and hence in specie flow.

Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek were two of the few economists who gave warning of a major economic crisis before the great crash of 1929. In February 1929, Hayek warned that a coming financial crisis was an unavoidable consequence of reckless monetary expansion.

Austrian School economist Peter J. Boettke argued in the wake of the Great Recession that the Federal Reserve was making a mistake by not allowing consumer prices to fall. According to him, the Fed's policy of reducing interest rates to below-market-level when there was a chance of deflation in the early 2000s together with government policy of subsidizing homeownership resulted in unwanted asset inflation. Financial institutions leveraged up to increase their returns in the environment of below market interest rates. Boettke further argues that government regulation through credit rating agencies enabled financial institutions to act irresponsibly and invest in securities that would perform only if the prices in the housing market continued to rise. However, once the interest rates went back up to the market level, prices in the housing market began to fall and soon afterwards financial crisis ensued. Boettke attributed the failure to policy makers who assumed that they had the necessary knowledge to make positive interventions in the economy. The Austrian School view is that government attempts to influence markets prolong the process of needed adjustment and reallocation of resources to more productive uses. In this view bailouts serve only to distribute wealth to the well-connected, while long-term costs are borne out by the majority of the ill-informed public.

Economist Steve H. Hanke identifies the 2007–2010 global financial crises as the direct outcome of the Federal Reserve Bank's interest rate policies as is predicted by the Austrian business cycle theory. Financial analyst Jerry Tempelman has also argued that the predictive and explanatory power of ABCT in relation to the global financial crisis has reaffirmed its status and perhaps cast into question the utility of mainstream theories and critiques.

Empirical research

Empirical economic research findings are inconclusive, with different economic schools of thought arriving at different conclusions. In 1969, Nobel laureate Milton Friedman found the theory to be inconsistent with empirical evidence. Twenty five years later in 1993, he reanalyzed the question using newer data, and reached the same conclusion. However, in 2001, Austrian School economist James P. Keeler argued that the theory is consistent with empirical evidence. Economists Francis Bismans and Christelle Mougeot arrived at the same conclusion in 2009.

According to some economic historians, economies have experienced less severe boom-bust cycles after World War II, because governments have addressed the problem of economic recessions. Many have argued that this has especially been true since the 1980s because central banks were granted more independence and started using monetary policy to stabilize the business cycle, an event known as The Great Moderation. However, Austrian economists argue the opposite, that boom-bust cycles following the creation of the Federal Reserve have been more frequent and more severe than those prior to 1913.

Reactions of economists and policymakers

According to Nicholas Kaldor, Hayek's work on the Austrian business cycle theory had at first "fascinated the academic world of economists" but attempts to fill in the gaps in theory led to the gaps appearing "larger, instead of smaller" until ultimately "one was driven to the conclusion that the basic hypothesis of the theory, that scarcity of capital causes crises, must be wrong".

Lionel Robbins, who had embraced the Austrian theory of the business cycle in The Great Depression (1934), later regretted having written that book and accepted many of the Keynesian counterarguments.

The Nobel Prize Winner Maurice Allais was a proponent of Austrian business cycle theory and their perspective on the Great Depression and often quoted Ludwig Von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

When, in 1937, the League of Nations examined the causes of and solutions to business cycles, the Austrian business cycle theory alongside the Keynesian and Marxian theory were the three main theories examined.

Similar theories

The Austrian theory is considered one of the precursors to the modern credit cycle theory, which is emphasized by Post-Keynesian economists, economists at the Bank for International Settlements. These two emphasize asymmetric information and agency problems. Henry George, another precursor, emphasized the negative impact of speculative increases in the value of land, which places a heavy burden of mortgage payments on consumers and companies.

A different theory of credit cycles is the debt-deflation theory of Irving Fisher.

In 2003, Barry Eichengreen laid out a credit boom theory as a cycle in which loans increase as the economy expands, particularly where regulation is weak, and through these loans' money supply increases. However, inflation remains low because of either a pegged exchange rate or a supply shock, and thus the central bank does not tighten credit and money. Increasingly speculative loans are made as diminishing returns lead to reduced yields. Eventually inflation begins or the economy slows, and when asset prices decline, a bubble is pricked which encourages a macroeconomic bust.

In 2006, William White argued that "financial liberalization has increased the likelihood of boom-bust cycles of the Austrian sort" and he has later argued the "near complete dominance of Keynesian economics in the post-world war II era" stifled further debate and research in this area. While White conceded that the status quo policy had been successful in reducing the impacts of busts, he commented that the view on inflation should perhaps be longer term and that the excesses of the time seemed dangerous. In addition, White believes that the Austrian explanation of the business cycle might be relevant once again in an environment of excessively low interest rates. According to the theory, a sustained period of low interest rates and excessive credit creation results in a volatile and unstable imbalance between saving and investment.

Related policy proposals

Economists Jeffrey Herbener, Joseph Salerno, Peter G. Klein and John P. Cochran have testified before Congressional Committee about the beneficial results of moving to either a free banking system or a free full-reserve banking system based on commodity money based on insights from Austrian business cycle theory.

Criticisms

According to John Quiggin, most economists believe that the Austrian business cycle theory is incorrect because of its incompleteness and other problems. Economists such as Gottfried von Haberler and Milton Friedman, Gordon Tullock, Bryan Caplan, and Paul Krugman, have also criticized the theory.

Theoretical objections

Some economists argue that the Austrian business cycle theory requires bankers and investors to exhibit a kind of irrationality, because their theory requires bankers to be regularly fooled into making unprofitable investments by temporarily low interest rates. In response, historian Thomas Woods argues that few bankers and investors are familiar enough with the Austrian business cycle theory to consistently make sound investment decisions. Austrian School economists Anthony Carilli and Gregory Dempster argue that a banker or firm loses market share if it does not borrow or loan at a magnitude consistent with current interest rates, regardless of whether rates are below their natural levels. Thus businesses are forced to operate as though rates were set appropriately, because the consequence of a single entity deviating would be a loss of business. Austrian School economist Robert Murphy argues that it is difficult for bankers and investors to make sound business choices because they cannot know what the interest rate would be if it were set by the market. Austrian economist Sean Rosenthal argues that widespread knowledge of the Austrian business cycle theory increases the amount of malinvestment during periods of artificially low interest rates.

In a 1998 interview, Milton Friedman expressed dissatisfaction with the policy implications of the theory:

I think the Austrian business-cycle theory has done the world a great deal of harm. If you go back to the 1930s, which is a key point, here you had the Austrians sitting in London, Hayek and Lionel Robbins, and saying you just have to let the bottom drop out of the world. You’ve just got to let it cure itself. You can’t do anything about it. You will only make it worse. You have Rothbard saying it was a great mistake not to let the whole banking system collapse. I think by encouraging that kind of do-nothing policy both in Britain and in the United States, they did harm.

Empirical objections

Jeffery Rogers Hummel argues that the Austrian explanation of the business cycle fails on empirical grounds. In particular, he notes that investment spending remained positive in all recessions where there are data, except for the Great Depression. He argues that this casts doubt on the notion that recessions are caused by a reallocation of resources from industrial production to consumption, since he argues that the Austrian business cycle theory implies that net investment should be below zero during recessions. In response, Austrian School economist Walter Block argues that the misallocation during booms does not preclude the possibility of demand increasing overall.

In 1969, economist Milton Friedman, after examining the history of business cycles in the U.S., concluded that the Austrian Business Cycle was false. He analyzed the issue using newer data in 1993, and again reached the same conclusion. Austrian economist Jesus Huerta de Soto claims that Friedman has not proven his conclusion because he focuses on the contraction of GDP being as high as the previous contraction, but that the theory "establishes a correlation between credit expansion, microeconomic malinvestment and recession, not between economic expansion and recession, both of which are measured by an aggregate (GDP)" and that the empirical record shows strong correlation.

Referring to Friedman's discussion of the business cycle, Austrian economist Roger Garrison stated that "Friedman's empirical findings are broadly consistent with both Monetarist and Austrian views" and goes on to argue that although Friedman's model "describes the economy's performance at the highest level of aggregation; Austrian theory offers an insightful account of the market process that might underlie those aggregates".

See also

References

  1. Manipulating the Interest Rate: a Recipe for Disaster, Thorsten Polleit, 13 December 2007.
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  14. Saving the System, Robert K. Landis, 21 August 2004
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Further reading

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