Organizations and Markets

Entrepreneurial Studies and Applied Economics at the AOM 2011

18 August 2011 at 12:19 am Peter Lewin 2 comments

| Peter Lewin|

Back from the AOM 2011 meetings in San Antonio, it is worth adding a few words on the Professional Development Workshop (PDW) on Austrian Economics organized by the Henrik Berglund, Todd Chiles, and our own Peter Klein. Also there were Roggl Koppl and Maria Minniti.

I, for one, found the session extremely enjoyable and worthwhile. I am not good at estimating numbers, but I believe there were in excess of fifty people there of diverse backgrounds — all shapes and sizes. The one thing they had in common was an interest in Austrian economics as applied to entrepreneurship. Some appeared to know more about it than others, but they all seemed to be genuinely curious. Very encouraging for those of us laboring for many years on behalf of the Austrian School.

Henrik began with a nice introduction, which he later followed up with a discussion of Kirzner on entrepreneurship. Peter Klein was first up with a masterful overview of Austrian Economics for newcomers, and Todd finished up with an interesting account of Lachmann’s work drawing on his recent work. We then split into spontaneously organized small groups to discuss various topics leading to suggested research topics. The group I was in arrived at the topic “The Anatomy of Disequilibrium Order.”

As I suggest to Peter K, this might be a manifestation of a development many of us have anticipated — in a nutshell, the bifurcation of the discipline of economics. While the mainstream has moved on to ever more narrowly technical and precisely irrelevant scholarly activities, those wishing to do real economics (economics that matters for the real world) are drawn to other closely related fields. I see this developing into a kind of “applied economics.”

Entry filed under: Austrian Economics, Ephemera, Former Guest Bloggers.