IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/revaec/v31y2018i3d10.1007_s11138-017-0407-y.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The classical roots of the Austrian theory of capital and entrepreneurship

Author

Listed:
  • Ferdinando Meacci

    (University of Padova)

  • Carmelo Ferlito

    (Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS)
    University of Wollongong Program)

Abstract

The paper deals with the continuities and discontinuities between some classical, Austrian and neo-Austrian authors with regard first to the theory of capital and then to the theory of entrepreneurship. Part I focuses on the elements of continuity between the classical and the Austrian theory of capital. These elements have been singled out by dealing first with the distinction between individual and national capital; and then with the difference between the resulting circulating-fixed capital and free-invested capital distinctions in the light, first, of the concept of roundaboutness and, then, of the method of vertical integration. Part II focuses on the elements of continuity between the Austrian theory of individual behaviour and the classical theory of national wealth. The distinctions between logical and historical time and between economics of time and economics in time are used to assess the links between the theory of capital as developed by the classics and Böhm-Bawerk, on the one hand, and the theory of entrepreneurship as developed by the neo-Austrians, on the other.

Suggested Citation

  • Ferdinando Meacci & Carmelo Ferlito, 2018. "The classical roots of the Austrian theory of capital and entrepreneurship," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 31(3), pages 315-339, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:revaec:v:31:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s11138-017-0407-y
    DOI: 10.1007/s11138-017-0407-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11138-017-0407-y
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11138-017-0407-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Harper, David A. & Endres, Anthony M., 2010. "Capital as a layer cake: A systems approach to capital and its multi-level structure," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 74(1-2), pages 30-41, May.
    2. Langlois, Richard N & Cosgel, Metin M, 1993. "Frank Knight on Risk, Uncertainty, and the Firm: A New Interpretation," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 31(3), pages 456-465, July.
    3. Hicks, J. R., 1969. "A Theory of Economic History," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198811633.
    4. Klaus H. Hennings & Heinz D. Kurz, 1997. "The Austrian Theory of Value and Capital," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 839.
    5. Lachmann, Ludwig M, 1976. "From Mises to Shackle: An Essay on Austrian Economics and the Kaleidic Society," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 14(1), pages 54-62, March.
    6. Ferdinando Meacci, 2009. "Different employment of capitals in vertically integrated sectors: Smith after the Austrians," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 22(4), pages 333-348, December.
    7. Eduard Braun, 2015. "Carl Menger’s Contribution to Capital Theory," History of Economic Ideas, Fabrizio Serra Editore, Pisa - Roma, vol. 23(1), pages 77-100.
    8. Ferlito, Carmelo, 2015. "Entrepreneurship: State of Grace or Human Action?," European Journal of Economic and Social Systems, Lavoisier, vol. 27(1-2), pages 11-36.
    9. Andrew Young, 2012. "The time structure of production in the US, 2002–2009," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 25(2), pages 77-92, June.
    10. Åke E. Andersson & David Emanuel Andersson, 2017. "Time, Space and Capital," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 15590.
    11. Baumol, William J., 1996. "Entrepreneurship: Productive, unproductive, and destructive," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 3-22, January.
    12. Ferdinando Meacci, 2009. "Uncertainty And Expectations In Shackle'S Theory Of Capital And Interest," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(2), pages 302-323, May.
    13. Hicks, John R, 1975. "The Scope and Status of Welfare Economics," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 27(3), pages 307-326, November.
    14. Israel M. Kirzner, 1996. "Essays on Capital and Interest," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1009.
    15. Peter Lewin & Nicolás Cachanosky, 2018. "Value and capital: Austrian capital theory, retrospect and Prospect," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 31(1), pages 1-26, March.
    16. Endres, Anthony M. & Harper, David A., 2011. "Carl Menger And His Followers In The Austrian Tradition On The Nature Of Capital And Its Structure," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 33(3), pages 357-384, September.
    17. Hicks, John R, 1974. "Capital Controversies: Ancient and Modern," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 64(2), pages 307-316, May.
    18. Hicks, J R, 1970. "A Neo-Austrian Growth Theory," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 80(318), pages 257-281, June.
    19. Ferlito, Carmelo, 2015. "Entrepreneurship: State of grace or human action? Schumpeter’s leadership vs Kirzner’s alertness," MPRA Paper 67694, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Meacci, Ferdinando, 1998. "Further Reflections on the Machinery Question," Contributions to Political Economy, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 17(0), pages 21-37.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Meacci, Ferdinando, 2020. "The Link Between Capital Accumulation And Increasing Wages In An Updated Version Of Smith’S Theory Of Population," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 42(3), pages 385-400, September.
    2. Carmelo Ferlito, 2022. "Axel Leijonhufvud: A personal recollection from an Austrian perspective," PSL Quarterly Review, Economia civile, vol. 75(302), pages 299-310.
    3. Ferlito, Carmelo, 2018. "Economics: A Science of Meaning," EconStor Preprints 190821, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ferlito, Carmelo, 2015. "Ludwig M. Lachmann contro la Scuola di Cambridge [Ludwig M. Lachmann against the Cambridge School]," MPRA Paper 67759, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Victor I. Espinosa & Miguel A. Alonso Neira & Jesús Huerta de Soto, 2021. "Principles of Sustainable Economic Growth and Development: A Call to Action in a Post-COVID-19 World," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(23), pages 1-14, November.
    3. Saras D. Sarasvathy & Nicholas Dew, 2013. "Without judgment: An empirically-based entrepreneurial theory of the firm," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 26(3), pages 277-296, September.
    4. William J. Luther, 2021. "Two paths forward for Austrian macroeconomics," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 34(2), pages 289-297, June.
    5. Antonio Bianco, 2016. "Hicks’s thread (out of the equilibrium labyrinth)," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 40(4), pages 1229-1245.
    6. Lynne Kiesling, 2021. "Plug-and-play, mix-and-match: a capital systems theory of digital technology platforms," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 34(1), pages 13-32, March.
    7. Meacci, Ferdinando, 2008. "Machinery Question," MPRA Paper 11696, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Dieter Boegenhold & Robert Klinglmair & Florian Kandutsch, 2017. "Solo Self-Employment, Human Capital and Hybrid Labour in the Gig Economy," Foresight and STI Governance (Foresight-Russia till No. 3/2015), National Research University Higher School of Economics, vol. 11(4), pages 23-32.
    9. J. Barkley Rosser, 2020. "Austrian themes and the Cambridge capital theory controversies," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 33(4), pages 415-431, December.
    10. Ferlito, Carmelo, 2019. "The Property Market, Affordability and the Malaysian National Housing Policy," EconStor Preprints 197287, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    11. Hirokazu Kano, 2021. "The dilemma and its solution of deep uncertainty in the dynamic capabilities framework: Insights from modern Austrian economics," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(3), pages 605-611, April.
    12. Harper, David A. & Endres, Anthony M., 2010. "Capital as a layer cake: A systems approach to capital and its multi-level structure," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 74(1-2), pages 30-41, May.
    13. Darcy W E Allen, 2020. "When Entrepreneurs Meet:The Collective Governance of New Ideas," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number q0269, August.
    14. Anthony Endres, 2013. "Is the economics of time and ignorance a “classic”?," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 26(1), pages 17-25, March.
    15. Malte Faber & Ralph Winkler, 2006. "Heterogeneity and Time," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 65(3), pages 803-825, July.
    16. Robin Douhan & Gunnar Eliasson & Magnus Henrekson, 2007. "Israel M. Kirzner: An Outstanding Austrian Contributor to the Economics of Entrepreneurship," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 213-223, June.
    17. Jeffery S. McMullen & Benjamin J. Warnick, 2016. "Should We Require Every New Venture to Be a Hybrid Organization?," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(4), pages 630-662, June.
    18. Hennings K.H., 1998. "The Austrian Theory of Value and Capital: Studies in the Life and Work of Eugen von Böhm Bawerk: Compte rendu par Jean-Gabriel Bliek," Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, De Gruyter, vol. 8(2-3), pages 343-352, June.
    19. Ferlito, Carmelo, 2015. "At the Root of Economic Fluctuations: Expectations, Preferences and Innovation. Theoretical Framework and Empirical Evidences," MPRA Paper 67708, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Harper, David A. & Endres, Anthony M., 2012. "The anatomy of emergence, with a focus upon capital formation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 352-367.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Capital-theory; Entrepreneurship; Value; Time;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B12 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought through 1925 - - - Classical (includes Adam Smith)
    • B13 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought through 1925 - - - Neoclassical through 1925 (Austrian, Marshallian, Walrasian, Wicksellian)
    • B25 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925 - - - Historical; Institutional; Evolutionary; Austrian; Stockholm School
    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:revaec:v:31:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s11138-017-0407-y. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.