Routledge Handbook of Macroeconomic Methodology

19 Complexity, policymaking, and the Austrian denial of macroeconomics

Scott Scheall

DOI: 10.4324/9781315745992-23

Introduction

On a common, if rather narrow, definition of the field, Austrian economists deny that macroeconomics has any positive scientific value. If macroeconomics is conceived not in terms of a broad analytical concern for the general functioning of the economy, but as a kind of theorising that uses the aggregative concepts and analytical framework developed by John Maynard Keynes and his various descendants, then Austrians do not do macroeconomics. On this definition, there is no uniquely Austrian method of macroeconomics and my task here is entirely negative: explain the Austrian denial of macroeconomics. On a more generous ...