La théorie autrichienne des cycles : une théorie de la récurrence des erreurs collectives d’anticipation

This paper offers an account of recent developments of Austrian Trade Cycle Theory. It focus on the theoretical contributions and argues that the Austrian Trade Cycle Theory became a theory of error cycles. Austrian economists agree to explain the errors of individuals by the nationalization of money because it leads an excess of money supply. Nevertheless, they disagree about the causes of this excess. Two explanations have been suggested. The first one measures the excess in relation with the demand of money. The second one evaluates the excess in relation with monetary saving. They agree, on the contrary, on the reasons of the recurrence of expectation errors and their uniformity. The theory of property rights explains the recurrence of expectation errors by the socialization of risk. The theory of cognitive expectations explains the collective errors by the centralisation of expectation process around (big player hypothesis) decisions of central banks. In fine it is the centralization of expectation process which explains the instability of market process.