Barron’s October 19, 1998 Oh, Those Assumptions! An engineer, a chemist and an economist are marooned on an island ... . Maybe you’ve heard that classic joke, maybe you haven’t. But either way, it’s worth reviewing, since it bears direct relevance to the work of the 64-year-old Indian economist Amartya Sen, formerly of Harvard, currently at
The average person must have chuckled in disbelief, while economists of the Austrian School had a right to smile ironically. I refer, of course, to this year’s winners of the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The 10 million Swedish krona (about $950,000 by the current exchange rate) will be shared equally by
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.