Tuesday, January 7, 2020

Mises Emphasizes the Teleological Nature of Time-Preference Expressed by Forward-Looking Decisions

Mises criticizes Böhm-Bawerk for not recognising that time should enter analysis only in the ex ante sense.

The role that time “plays in action consists entirely in the choices acting man makes between periods of production of different length. The length of time expended in the past for the production of capital goods available today does not count at all […] The ‘average period of production’ is an empty concept.” (ibid., pp. 488-489). In other words, Mises emphasizes the teleological nature of time-preference as it is expressed by forward-looking decision made by producers and consumers.

—Agnès Festré, “Knowledge and Individual Behaviour in the Austrian Tradition of Business Cycles: von Mises vs. Hayek,” History of Economic Ideas 11, no. 1 (2003): 22.


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