Read Raico's Essay Over the Holiday

The Mises Blog (http://blog.mises.org/blog/) publishes, as usual, an interesting weekend article, this one by Ralph Raico, ‘The European Miracle’.

What, for me, is particularly interesting about Raico’s essay is its emphasis on the ‘time dimension’ and the social-cultural context of economic growth, so often neglected – often not even mentioned – in what he calls the ‘consensus’ or neoclassical school of growth economics.

This is very much in line with Adam Smith’s historical approach to the wealth of nations. Smith, ironically, is an author much derided within the Mises School, as seen, infamously, in the rabid rants of Murray Rothbard, whose work I have criticised on Lost legacy, notably in his muddled (even abusive) misreading of Smith on the division of labour.

However, on the need for an historical approach to growth economics, I am at one with Ralph Raico, and with his editor Pete Boetkke, from whose book of edited essays this one is extracted, "The Theory of Economic Development and the 'European Miracle' ”, The Collapse of Development Planning, (The Political economy of the Austrian School), 1994, New York University Press.