Mises Institute


The Ludwig von Mises Institute for Austrian Economics, or Mises Institute, is a nonprofit think-tank located in Auburn, Alabama, United States. It is named after Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises.
The Mises Institute 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, and was funded by Ron Paul.

Background and location

The Ludwig von Mises Institute was established in 1982 in the wake of a dispute which occurred in the early 1980s between Murray Rothbard and the Cato Institute, another libertarian organization co-founded by Rothbard.
Early after its founding, the Mises Institute was located at the business department offices of Auburn University, and relocated nearby to its current site in 1998. "Southerners have always been distrustful of government," making the South a "natural home" for the organization's libertarian outlook.

Views espoused by founders and organization scholars

In a 2006 article published on the Wall Street Journal's website, Kyle Wingfield credited the Institute for helping make the "Heart of Dixie a wellspring of sensible economic thinking."
The Institute is founded in Misesian praxeology, that holds that economic science is a deductive science rather than an empirical science. Developed by Ludwig von Mises, following the Methodenstreit opened 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.

American Civil War and the Confederacy

A 2000 "Intelligence Report" by the Southern Poverty Law Center, categorized the Institute as Neo-Confederate, "devoted to a radical libertarian view of government and economics."

Publications, conferences, activities and awards

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 scholars

Noted scholars include:
The Mises Institute has been criticized by some libertarians for the adoption of paleolibertarian and right-wing cultural views by some of its leading figures, on topics such as race, immigration, and the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.
In 2003, Chip Berlet of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an American nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation, described the Mises Institute as "a major center promoting libertarian political theory and the Austrian School of free market economics", also noting Rothbard's opposition to child labor laws and the anti-immigrant views of other Institute scholars.