On November 4-5, the 10th Austrian Economics Conference took place at the Austrian Central Bank (Österreichische Nationalbank). The event was organized in collaboration with the Fundación Bases and the Hayek Institut and received more than 150 academics, researchers, think-tankers, entrepreneurs, and student advocates of the ideas of freedom from all over the world. #RestartVienna became a great motivation for the promoters of the ideas of the Austrian School to...
Read More »China’s social credit system – a new Cultural Revolution
The Cultural Revolution of the 1960s was a comprehensive effort by Mao Zedong to regulate how people think and behave. Citizens were forced to read the “Red Bible” and honor the Communist Party with quasi-religious rituals. Mutual supervision was encouraged throughout all of society. People were told that the way of thinking and behavior advocated by Mao Zedong was the only correct one. Sixty years later, China is undergoing another Cultural Revolution, the goal...
Read More »Market Economy Beats Planned Economy
Throughout the next weeks, we will regularly feature the keynote speeches held by our distinguished experts at this year’s digital Free Market Road Show. The times we are living in – the pandemic – are times when our fundamental values are threatened maybe more than ever in modern times. More than ever in modern times because we are living not in a time of containment, with an Iron Curtain, or a Bamboo Curtain, dividing the world in two as in the Cold...
Read More »A Look Back at Nixon’s Infamous Monetary Policy Decision
Putting the World on a Paper Standard Half a century ago one of the most disastrous monetary policy decisions in US history was committed by Richard Nixon. In a television address, the president declared that the nation would no longer redeem internationally dollars for gold. Since the dollar was the world’s reserve currency, Nixon’s closing of the “Gold Window” put the world on an irredeemable paper monetary standard. The ramifications of the act reverberate to...
Read More »Post-Covid China
Lessons to be Learned from East Asia The world should take a lesson from how East Asia ran itself in 2020. Japan had no lockdown. None. With an aging population, its death rate has been creeping up for many years. In 2020, it fell by 0.7%, as if Covid-19 was a life-saver. The Prime Minister of Singapore repeatedly appeared on TV to advise people to live normally and not let fear dominate. Taiwan had a total of 623 Covid-19 related deaths [ed. note: there were only...
Read More »Prospects for China’s dual circulation strategy
by Henrique Schneider China is the only major economy to have grown in 2020. Now the party and state leadership are preparing for a Chinese era, adding a new economic arrow to their geopolitical quiver. Once again, the 2021 National People’s Congress, held from March 5-11, followed a strict choreography. The political leadership entered the Great Hall of the People to the sound of a military band and led by state and party leader, President Xi Jinping. The...
Read More »Malta under Pressure
by Dr. Federica Saini Fasanotti Malta is a compact archipelago in the Mediterranean Sea, 80 km from Sicily, 333 km from Libya and 284 km from Tunisia. It had a long list of rulers, including the Phoenicians, the Byzantines, the Arabs and later the French under Napoleon and finally the British. The island gained independence in 1964, and in 2004 it joined the European Union. In recent years, the smallest EU member state, with a population of less than half a...
Read More »COVID in India
India’s experience with the COVID pandemic was particularly unpleasant… [PT] - Click to enlarge Scavengers Out in Full Force I have just returned from a visit to my family in India. It was hard to escape. To get to the US from India, I needed a COVID test. The Indian government has seriously restricted who can provide COVID testing, treatment, and vaccination. Private doctors and hospitals that are not approved face brutal legal consequences if they provide COVID...
Read More »World IP Day
Monday, April 26, marked World IP Day. In cooperation with the Property Rights Alliance (PRA), the Austrian Economics Center celebrated it by signing its annual coalition letter, addressed to the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Director-General Daren Tang. Property rights benefit businesses, both big and small, start-ups or companies with a long tradition. This, in turn, enriches society as a whole. The COVID-19 pandemic has cost us too much. As a response...
Read More »AEC Announces Austrian Economics Conference in Vienna
10th International Conference “The Austrian School of Economics in the 21st Century” will be held in Vienna (Austria) on November 4 and 5, 2021, organized by the Austrian Economics Center and Fundación Internacional Bases. Born in the city of Rosario, Argentina, in 2006, the Conference has become a must attend event for all those interested in the Austrian School of Economics, free trade, an open economy, and a social order favorable to entrepreneurship and...
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