Mises, Ludwig von

Abstract

Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises (September 29, 1881, in Lemberg – October 10, 1973, in New York City) was a classical liberal philosopher, sociologist, and one of the most influential adherents to the Austrian school of economics. He made major contributions to the epistemology of the social sciences and to many areas of general economics, especially the fields of value theory, monetary theory, and business cycle theory. In his habilitation thesis of 1912, The Theory of Money and Credit, he laid down the foundations of what would later become Austrian business cycle theory. The whole body of Misesian economics which is based on praxeology, the rational investigation of human decision making, is comprised in his 1949 Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. Among his disciples were such noteworthy economists as Friedrich August von Hayek (1899–1992) and Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995).