His Life
Born in Lemberg, Austria-Hungary (today, Lviv, Ukraine), he earned his doctorate in law and economics from the University of Vienna in 1906. One of his best works, The Theory of Money and Credit, was published in 1912. Money, noted Mises, is demanded for its usefulness in purchasing other goods, rather than for its own sake. He presented a new business-cycle theory in the light of which economic crises appeared as resulting from inflation-induced misallocations of resources. He also showed that money could not possibly be neutral, and that increases of the quantity of money always had redistribution effects

Major Contribution:

Mises also a strong proponent of laissez-faire; he advocated that the government not intervene anywhere in the economy. In the fall of 1919, von Mises wrote his most famous essay, on "economic calculation in the socialist commonwealth." He argued that a socialist leadership lacked the essential tool for the rational allocation of resources--economic calculation--and that only the money prices of a capitalist economy make it possible to compare alternative investment projects in terms of a common unit. Interestingly, though, even Mises made some striking exceptions to this view. For example, he believed that military conscription could be justified in wartime.

To avoid the Nazi influence in his Austrian homeland, in 1934 Mises left for Geneva, where he was a professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies until 1940. In 1940 he emigrated to New York City. He was a visiting professor at New York University from 1948 until he retired in 1969

Some quotes by Ludwig von Mises:

...economic history is a long record of government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics.

A nation's policy forms an integral whole. Foreign policy and domestic policy are closely linked together; they are but one system; they condition each other.

The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.

What matters is not the allocation of portions out of a fund presented to man by nature. The problem is rather to further those social institutions which enable people to continue and to enlarge the production of all those things which they need.

Selected Works

"Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth ." 1920. Reprinted in Collectivist Economic Planning: Critical Studies on the Possibilities of Socialism, edited by Friedrich Hayek. 1935.

Mises, Ludwig von. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. 1949.

Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, 3d ed. 1966.
Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. Fourth revised ed., 1996.

Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War. 1944. Reprint. 1985.

The Theory of Money and Credit. 1912. 3d English ed. 1981.

Finance and Banking in the Austrian Empire and Republic of Austria, two articles from the 12th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica

Socialism. 1922