The Economic Point Of View

No other economist in recent times has been so closely identified with the Austrian School of economics as Israel M. Kirzner. A leader of the generation of Austrian economists after Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek and professor emeritus of economics at New York University, Kirzner has been recognized as one of the minds behind the revival of entrepreneurship and market process theory in the twentieth century.

In this book, Kirzner explains how the "economic point of view" emerged in the development of economic science since the eighteenth century and through it, the concepts of purpose, subjectivism, and rationality. Kirzner's incomparable ability to navigate through the core ideas of economics helps the reader become progressively familiar with the history of the discipline and its definition.

As Kirzner writes in his preface, this work attempts to explore the "fundamental ideas around which the entire corpus of economic thought has revolved for some two centuries. It remains as true today as ever before that the direction taken by economic theory is in large measure determined by the 'point of view' adopted by the economist." Kirzner explores the shifting orientation of economists from classical political economy to modern neoclassical economics.

This volume includes discussions of the science of wealth and welfare; the nature of economic science and the significance of macroeconomics; and economics as a science of human action. The Liberty Fund edition also presents the four papers that make up the Becker-Kirzner debate on rationality in economics and which appeared in the Journal of Political Economy in 1962 and 1963.

Perhaps Mises himself best summarizes The EconomicPoint of View in his foreword: "It is a very valuable contribution to the history of ideas, describing the march of economics from a science of wealth to a science of human action."