The Ludwig von Mises Institute for Austrian Economics, or Mises Institute, is a libertarian nonprofit think tank located in Auburn, Alabama, United States.
It is named after Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973).
It was founded in 1982 by Lew Rockwell, Burton Blumert, and Murray Rothbard, following a split between the Cato Institute and Rothbard, who had been one of the founders of the Cato Institute.
It was funded by Ron Paul.
Background and location
The Ludwig von Mises Institute was founded in 1982 by Lew Rockwell.
Rockwell, who had previously served as editor for Arlington House Publishers, received the blessing of Margit von Mises during a meeting at the Russian Tea Room in New York City, and she was named the first chairman of the board.
Early supporters of the Institute included F.A. Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, Murray Rothbard, Ron Paul, and Burt Blumert.
According to Rockwell, the motivation of the Institute was to promote the specific contributions of Ludwig von Mises, who he feared was being ignored by libertarian institutions financed by Charles Koch and David Koch.
As recounted by Justin Raimondo, Rockwell said he received a phone call from George Pearson, of the Koch Foundation, who had said that Mises was too radical to name an organization after or promote.
Rothbard served as the original academic vice president of the Institute.
Paul agreed to become distinguished counselor and assisted with early fundraising.
Judge John V. Denson assisted in the Mises Institute becoming established at the campus of Auburn University.
Auburn was already home to some Austrian economists, including Roger Garrison.
The Mises Institute was affiliated with the Auburn University Business School until 1998 when the Institute established its own building across the street from campus.
Kyle Wingfield wrote a 2006 commentary in The Wall Street Journal that the Southern United States was a "natural home" for the Institute, as "Southerners have always been distrustful of government," with the institute making the "Heart of Dixie a wellspring of sensible economic thinking."
Its academic programs include Mises University, Rothbard Graduate Seminar, the Austrian Economics Research Conference, and a summer research fellowship program.
In 2020, the Mises Institute began offering a graduate program.
It has led to the creation of spin-off organizations around the world, including Brazil,https://mises.org.br/ Germany, South Korea,miseskorea.org and Turkey.misesenstitusu.com Views
Economic
A defining philosophical trademark of the Institute is grounding the subject of economics in Misesian praxeology ('the logic of human action'), which holds that economic science is a deductive science rather than an empirical science.
Developed by Ludwig von Mises, following the Methodenstreit opined by Carl Menger, it is a self-conscious opposition to the mathematical modeling and hypothesis-testing used to justify knowledge in neoclassical economics.
Externally, this economic method usually is considered a form of heterodox economics.
This emphasis on Misesian methodology stands is distinct from other prominent scholars in the Austrian tradition, including Hayek, and often distinguishes scholars of the Mises Institute from those associated with George Mason University.
Political
The Mises Institute has been associated with the politically libertarian ideas of its leading figures including Lew Rockwell, Murray Rothbard, Ron Paul, Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Tom Woods.
It has published a variety of different political traditions, including the work the Jacksonians, Old Right (United States), Constitutionalism, anarcho-capitalism, minarchism, left-libertarianism and paleolibertarianism.
It has been criticized by some libertarians for the paleolibertarian and right-wing cultural views of some of its leading figures, on topics such as race, immigration, and the presidential campaigns of Donald Trump.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Rockwell and Rothbard embraced racial and class resentments to build a coalition with populist paleoconservatives.
This rhetoric appeared at the time in newsletters for Ron Paul that Rockwell was later identified as writing, including statements against black people and gay people that later became controversies in Paul's congressional and presidential campaigns.
Separately, Rothbard's writing opposed "multiculturalists" and "the entire panoply of feminism, egalitarianism".
A 2000 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) categorized the Institute as Neo-Confederate, "devoted to a radical libertarian view of government and economics."
In 2003, Chip Berlet of the SPLC described the Mises Institute as "a major center promoting libertarian political theory and the Austrian School of free market economics", noted Rothbard's disgust with child labor laws, and wrote that other institute scholars held anti-immigrant views.
Jeff Deist, president of the institute, has emphasized political self-determination and respect for property rights as foundational political objectives, saying, "The overarching libertarian political value is self-determination.
Decentralization, secession, subsidiarity, and nullification are the mechanisms that move us closer to that value.
Insisting on universal values, political or otherwise, is both a strategic and ethical mistake."
The Mises Institute has published articles in support of various secession movements, including Brexit and the Catalan independence movement.
In 2017, Deist gave a speech at the Mises University conference, where in his concluding remarks he stated that the ideas of "blood and soil and God and nation still matter to people".
Deist's use of the phrase blood and soil was alleged by some to be an explicit signal to Neo-Nazis and other white nationalist groups.
In particular, Nicholas Sarwark and Arvin Vohra, then the chair and vice-chair of the United States Libertarian Party, condemned Deist's speech, with Vohra stating that "the Mises Institute has been turned into a sales funnel for the White Nationalist branch of the Alt Right".
Vohra further accused the Mises Institute as a whole of being "authoritarian, racist, nazi".
The criticism was dismissed by some other prominent libertarians, including Bryan Caplan, who called it "a reasonable presentation of a plausible view".
Republican politicians that have spoken at Mises Institute events include Ron Paul, Thomas Massie, and Glenn Jacobs.
Senator Rand Paul referenced the work of Mises Institute author Jose Nino in his book The Case Against Socialism.
When serving as Chairman of the House Financial Services Domestic Monetary Policy Subcommittee, Ron Paul had several Mises Institute-associated scholars testify on the Federal Reserve and monetary policy.
Mises Institute Senior Fellow Robert P. Murphy has spoken before the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and U.S. House Energy Committee.
When a New York Times reporter requested a tour of the Institute in 2014, Rockwell asked him to leave, saying he was "part of the regime."
Candice Jackson, who served as acting head of the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights during the Trump Administration, was previously a summer fellow at the Mises Institute.
Publications
thumb|upright|Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics thumb|upright|Mises.org is the website of the Mises Institute The Mises Institute makes available a large number of books, journal articles, and other writings online, and archives various writings on its website.
Its Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics discusses Austrian economics.
It published the Journal of Libertarian Studies from 1977 to 2008.
Notable faculty
Notable figures affiliated with the Mises Institute include:
Walter Block – Austrian School economist and anarcho-capitalist; economics professor at Loyola University New Orleans
Godfrey Bloom – British politician, former Member of the European Parliament
Thomas DiLorenzo – economics professor at Loyola University Maryland
Paul Gottfried –  paleoconservative author, former Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College
Hans-Hermann Hoppe – philosopher, paleolibertarian, business professor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and founder of Property and Freedom Society
Jesús Huerta de Soto – Professor of Applied Economics at King Juan Carlos University
Peter Klein – Professor of Entrepreneurship and Senior Research Fellow with the Center for Entrepreneurship & Free Enterprise at Baylor University
Robert P. Murphy – economist, Institute for Energy Research
Andrew Napolitano – Fox News pundit and former judge
Gary North – co-founder of Christian reconstructionism and founder of Institute for Christian Economics
Ron Paul – physician, author, and former congressman
Ralph Raico (1936–2016) – historian and libertarian specializing in European classical liberalism and Austrian economics
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) – heterodox economist, paleolibertarian theorist, polemicist, revisionist historian, and founder of anarcho-capitalism
Joseph Sobran (1946–2010) – journalist, contributor to American Renaissance and lecturer at the Institute for Historical Review
Mark Thornton – Austrian School economist
Joseph T. Salerno – academic vice president of the Mises Institute, Professor of Economics at Pace University, and editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics
Thomas Woods – historian, political analyst, and author
See also
Anarcho-capitalism
Austrian School
Cultural conservatism
Libertarian conservatism
Libertarian Party Mises Caucus
Old Right (United States)
Paleolibertarianism
Property and Freedom Society
Right-libertarianism
References
External links
EDIRC listing (provided by RePEc)
