Review of Economic Philosophy

Tag: Kirzner (Israel)

  • The Nietzschean Origins of Ambiguities of the Entrepreneur Concept: Schumpeter as a Reader of Nietzsche

    Abstract

    The figure of the entrepreneur is now used in a wide variety of public discourses. This work seeks to trace one of the theoretical sources for the constitution of this figure: Schumpeter’s 1911a, b theory of the entrepreneur. This study shows, by taking into account Schumpeter’s intellectual and theoretical context, that he was led to import a philosophical anthropology in economics, that of Nietzsche, an author widely read in Austria at the beginning of the 20th century. By transposing, within his economic theory, some of the main features of the great Nietzschean creative man into the figure of the entrepreneur, Schumpeter develops an original explanation of the dynamic nature of the market and of economic evolution. Nevertheless, a whole series of ambiguities are also important to Nietzsche, particularly with regard to the origin of the individual exceptionality of the entrepreneur, and more specifically his creative power. A second ambiguity is very widely inherited, which concerns the extension of the individual entrepreneur model: does it constitute a theory of action valid for all individuals or only for a particular type of individual? How can we reconcile the exceptionality of the entrepreneur with the norm of entrepreneurship for all? The last part of this work thus explores these ambiguities, which appear in Schumpeter and his successors, notably Israel Kirzner.

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    JEL Codes: B13, B25, B31, B40

    [Read the review in Cairn]

  • The foundations of the theory of entrepreneurship in Austrian economics— Menger and Böhm-Bawerk on the entrepreneur

    Abstract

    The contributions of Austrian marginalist Carl Menger (1840-1921) and his first disciple, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (1851-1914), to the analysis of business practice and entrepreneurship reached beyond a mere by-product of the building of the so-called “Austrian school of economics” as an alternative paradigm to the well-known “German Historical School.” Menger’s and Böhm-Bawerk’s multifaceted views on business and analysis of entrepreneurship rapidly emerged among their concerns in their writings and deeds within the Imperial Austro-Hungarian (k. und k.) government. Menger’s and Böhm-Bawerk’s works raise the issue of which traits entrepreneurs and capitalists share, how to differentiate them, and what budding new type of economic agent ought to be observed. As we place their seminal works in the context of the late period of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, we disentangle their views on the entrepreneur and show how they paved the way for ideas that Schumpeter would later popularize.

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    JEL classification: B25, D21, L26, O31