The Economic Point of View (The Collected Works of Israel M. Kirzner)

The Economic Point of View is the inaugural volume in Liberty Fund's new Collected Works of Israel M. Kirzner series. This work established Kirzner as a careful and meticulous scholar of economics. No other living economist is so closely associated with the AustrianSchool of economics as Israel M. Kirzner, professor emeritus of economics at New YorkUniversity. He has been a leader of the generation of AustrianSchool economists following Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek.

In The Economic Point of View, Kirzner explores the basic ideas around which the entire body of economic thought has revolved for some two centuries. He 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.

Within the seven chapters, Kirzner discusses such subjects as the science of wealth and welfare; the nature of economic science and the significance of macroeconomics; and the sciences as human action, including a section on praxeology and its relationship to the economic point of view. As Mises writes in his foreword to the volume, "Dr. Kirzner's book . . . 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. . . . �Every economist-and for that matter everybody interested in problems of general epistemology-will read with great profit Doctor Kirzner's analyses."

Peter J. Boettke is the BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism at the MercatusCenter and a University Professor of economics at GeorgeMasonUniversity. His publications include Why Perestroika Failed: The Economics and Politics of Socialist Transformation and Calculation and Coordination. Since 1998 he has been the editor of the Review of Austrian Economics.

Fr�d�ric Sautet is a Senior Research Fellow at the MercatusCenter and a member of the graduate faculty at GeorgeMasonUniversity. He is the author ofAn