Psst. Hey Bud. Wanna Get my Book?

Far be it from me to condone violations of copyright law and all of that, but it appears as though some kind soul has put my Microfoundations and Macroeconomics:  An Austrian Approach (Routledge, 2000) book on the web as a PDF.  I can't tell you what to do with that information, but you can decide for yourself here.  (Scan quality is mediocre.)

Comments

[Dan]

There's actually a better quality, smaller (800-odd kb) version here: http://ifile.it/2a97m1b/0415197627.zip

But don't tell anyone.

Especially don't tell them that you can get thousands of books from gigapedia.com too.

[Rafael Guthmann]

"but it appears as though some kind soul has put my book on the web"

I know the guy that did this, he is from Brazil. His name is Rafael Hotz. This book is only one of several books about austrian economics that he has violated copyright and put on the web, like Competition and Entrepreneurship and The Economics of Time and Ignorance. He is an undergraduate student.

[James]

Steve,

Thanks for posting this. What important work!

I'm not an economist, but I studied economics as an undergrad at Brown. Even before I had ever heard of the Austrian school (thank you, Louis Putterman), I always knew, somehow, that what I learned in macro classes had to be compatible with microeconomics or else it was suspect. It's funny, I had never even heard of Keynes, but I somehow "knew" that the national income equation defied both logic and basic economic principles. Little did I know then that people with much more talent and ambition than I had were already working on these very problems.

As a lay person who has discovered Austrian economics on his own, it is heartening to see the great work being done, or that has already been done, which corrects the errors and gaps one typically finds in undergrad economics curricula. Hell, it corrects errors, I should say, that are still being taught in "tier-one" graduate progarams!

[libertyfirst]

My opinion about book prices is that inelasticity is overrated. :-)

I would have never bought Garrison's "Time and Money" at 200$, but at 30$ I can suggest everyone to get a copy. Maybe I haven't convinced anyone so far, but there is some hope that someone may get interested anyway: at 200$ only colleges and universities could buy it.

When the paperback version of Garrison's book was published, I entered the Amazon site as soon as I could.

At the moment I am interested in improving my knowledge of the various "variants" of Austrian economics. But while I can read a lot on the mises.org site, many others are out of reach.

Selgin and White's book are economic, at least one Yeager book is, too. But others are a problem. Not working in an economics department I could only enter the national library and spend mornings and afternoons there.

[libertyfirst]

economical, not economic. :-)

[Rafael Hotz]

Steve Horwitz,

I'm the guy who digitalized your book... The copy is from my college here in Brazil...

As a libertarian I mantain that intelectual property is a government mantained fraud, and hence I have the right to scan and upload the books...

However, if you wish so, I will refrain from exercising this right and will remove my file from the 4.shared ...

But I will tell you something. At least here in Brazil, knowledge about the Austrian School or Libertarianism is almost null. The colleges are taken over by Marxists and Keynesians (and neoclassicals), and the internet is the only way of getting info about this stuff.

I begun knowing about your work (and your blog folks) through the internet, the essays you guys make avalible are a inestimable source for grad students who want to learn real economics... So, why not gain more visibility?

Keep up the good work!

Rafael Hotz

PS: Pete Boettke, I translated this article (http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/AustrianSchoolofEconomics.html) to Portuguese in the blog as well.

[Steve Horwitz]

Hey, don't get me wrong Rafael, my views on IP are not strong enough to say word one about the choice you've made. Plus, until Routledge lowers the price, I frankly don't care what people do to get their hands on the book and demonstrate that there's a market if the price is lower (short of actual theft of course :) ).

More seriously, I would hope that Routledge might also see some wisdom in "re-issuing" my book at a more reasonable price given what I think is its relevance to the current economy. But who knows?

[Rafael Hotz]

Steve, I've got the copy right here, and there's a pencil inscription on the first page saying that it was bought in 2006 for £137,70 (299,84 Brazilian Reals at the time)...

Of course much is due to shipping costs, but it's actually expensive for us here...

And by the way, the book is very good, helped me to clear some doubts about the ABCT... I'll surely quote it in my undergrad final paper...

Recomended!

[greg ransom]

Garrison's $30 paperback Routledge book is #289,476 at Amazon, which is very good for a 9 year old economics text.

Garrison has some sort of deal with Routledge to be allowed to put the first 2 chapters on line at his web site.

Have you asked Routledge about that?

Almost all publishers now allow the first chapter to go on line.

[Lawrence H. White]

Well, now i'm in an ethical dilemma. I too would love for Routledge to re-issue yours and all the other books in the Foundations of the Market Economy series in affordable paperback versions. As co-editor of the series I will again urge them to do so. But in the meantime, do I have a fiduciary duty to report to them outright copyright infringements that come to my attention?

[Steve Horwitz]

I only point out ethical dilemmas. I don't provide guidance as to the solutions!

[Matěj Šuster]

Steve Horwitz:

Have you actually responded to criticisms & suggestions for future research made by Axel Leijonhufvud in his very interesting review of your book?
[http://www.gmu.edu/rae/archives/VOL15_4_2002/leijonhufvudbr.pdf]

By the view, Leijonhufvud´s (quite) recent papers "Keynes and the Crisis" [http://www-ceel.economia.unitn.it/staff/leijonhufvud/files/copenhagen2008.pdf] and “Monetary and Financial Instability” [http://www.cepr.org/pubs/PolicyInsights/PolicyInsight14.pdf] are very useful and insightful.

[Matěj Šuster]

By the way, not "by the view", obviously ... :)

[Steve Horwitz]

Thanks for those links Matej. I had seen one of those but not the other.

As for AL's other criticisms, the reality is that I moved away from really developing the macro stuff shortly after the book was published. Were I to return to it seriously, I'd have to go back to that review and think again about what he had to say.

[Rafe Champion]

The book is also on line, presumably legitimately, at Questia http://www.questia.com/Index.jsp

There is a fee, $100 pa and this gives access to a very large library of books, journal aricles and newspaper articles. Unlike Google the texts are in full, also there is a limited printing facility and the text can be cut and pasted. Some of the Austrian books on the list are not in the library at the University of Sydney.

The first items on the Austrian economics list are.

1. The Philosophy of the Austrian School
by Raimondo Cubeddu. 269 pgs. Book

2. The Driving Force of the Market: Essays in Austrian Economics
by Israel M. Kirzner. 296 pgs. Book

3. Microfoundations and Macroeconomics: An Austrian Perspective
by Steven Horwitz. 276 pgs. Book

4. Risk and Business Cycles: New and Old Austrian Perspectives
by Tyler Cowen. 174 pgs. Book

5. Socialism and Marginalism in Economics: 1870-1930
by Ian Steedman. 263 pgs. Book

6. Elements of Marxian Economic Theory and Its Criticism (Chap. 33 "Bohm-Bawerk and the Austrian School")
by William J. Blake. 750 pgs. Book

7. The Growth of Economic Thought ("The Austrian School: Accent on Utility" in Chap. 23)
by Henry William Spiegel. 868 pgs. Book

8. Carl Menger and His Legacy in Economics
by Bruce J. Caldwell. 407 pgs. Book

9. Hayek's Social and Political Thought
by Roland Kley. 248 pgs. Book

10. Shorter Classics
by Eugene von Bohm-Bawerk. 378 pgs. Book

[Matěj Šuster]

It is actually a great shame. Recently, nobody seems to be systematically developing Austrian macro and trying to fill in the holes and correct some of the flaws etc. For example, Roger Garrison basically repeats one and the same set of assertions and diagramms again and again. Not much of a development there.

Furthermore, the macro stuff published in Austrian journals (especially in QJAE) is often very mediocre and reading it is a waste of time [two cases in point: 1) Tobias Basse: An Austrian Version of the Lucas Critique, QJAE, Vol. 9 Num. 1; 2) Nikolay Gertchev: A Critique of Adaptive and Rational Expectations, QJAE, Vol. 10, Num. 4]. Not to mention the many TERRIBLE and UNSCHOLARLY Walter Block´s and Bill Barnett´s papers on macro issues. :-))

In my view, there´s much truth in Leijonhufvud´s assessment:

"Austrians stand in a difficult relationship to mainstream economics. Their consistently critical, not to say adversarial, stance towards it has created a degree of self-referential isolation that should probably be credited with preserving and developing a set of important ideas that might otherwise hardly have survived. But it has left the problem of how Austrians are to interact with the rest of the profession so that these ideas will gain the wider influence that they deserve and so that they will not run out of worthwhile things to say and do and thus condemn themselves to reciting a catechism.

(...)

Horwitz is willing to reach outside the Austrian circle and discusses at some length the relationships between Austrian ideas and the works of W.H. Hutt, Leland Yeager and myself. Needless to say, this does not reach out far enough to make contact with the current mainstream.

While three Austrian themes won’t cover the field, they harbor both unresolved conceptual problems and unexploited theoretical opportunities that deserve further exploration."

[James]

The previous post is bizarre, especially the quoted review. As an outsider, it seems to me that on macro issues it is the Keynesians and Monetarists who work in "self-referential isolation."

On the web, at least, Austrians reach out to the "mainstream" all the time. It would be very interesting to see Keynesian web denizens like Brad DeLong or Paul Krugman even bother to address, just once, the arguments put forth by Austrians. I just haven't seen it happen. (Austrians: "not a major school," quoth the great Krugman.)

Also, anyone happen to know what's so "TERRIBLE" about Walter Block?

[Matěj Šuster]

Well, as for Block & Barnett, a couple of examples will surely suffice:

1. On Laidler regarding the Austrian business cycle theory - http://www.gmu.edu/rae/archives/Vol20_1_2007/4-Block_Barnett.pdf

2. Saving and Investment: A Praxeological Approach -- http://pcpe.libinst.cz/nppe/3_2/nppe3_2_1.pdf

Ask yourself: do those papers contribute anything of value to the body of Austrian economics? I very much doubt it.

[aadl]

Copyright is a crime, a monopoly, a crookopoly; libertarians and Austrians, of all people, should ignore it.

[Antisthenes]

After you've read Horwitz, Von Mises and Hayek you will find great reading at libertyfund.org - but you should buy their books. The money goes to a good cause.

Anyone concerned about the acceleration of centralized government will find these two books particularly relevant and timely:

The Ethics of Redistribution, Bertrand de Jouvenel
The Morals of Markets, H.B. Acton

[James]

Matěj,

I'll take the bait. What's so terrible about "Saving and Investment: A Praxeological Approach"?

[Matěj Šuster]

Well, I would have to reread it in order to be more specific but upon first reading I did not gain any useful knowledge whatsoever from that paper.

What useful knowledge did you gain by reading it? Are you now persuaded i.e. that "hoarding is not saving" (pg. 135) or that "real saving and real investment are the same thing" (pg. 133)? :-)

[Sheldon Richman]

Steve, how about a Kindle version?!

[Rafael Guthmann]

"What useful knowledge did you gain by reading it?"

Well, 99% of all articles do not represent any king of advance in the extension of knowledge in science. I can gain knowledge from these articles only when there are some other articles about the same thing that I didn't study. Only a small proportion of articles are "gold". I mean articles like Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth and Economics and Knowledge aren't common.