In an interesting, though apparently neglected, aside, Professor Hayek has remarked that “. . . neither aggregates nor averages do act upon one another, and it will never be possible to establish necessary connections of cause and effect between them as we can between individual phenomena, individual prices, etc. I would even go so far as to assert that, from the very nature of economic theory, averages can never form a link in its reasoning. . . .”
Now, any serious doubt concerning the validity of aggregates and averages is a dagger aimed straight at the heart of much current empirical research and statistical analysis in economics. Therefore it deserves close and systematic attention, even if this involves, in the opinion of some dedicated empiricists, an annoying interruption of the “front-line” activity of measurement for the mere purpose of “armchair” discussion of methodological issues. Yet such is our contemporary spirited march on “objective data” that one who begins to suspect that a wrong turn may have been made sometime back almost naturally feels guilty for harboring this traitorous thought, and, if he expresses it at all, must expect to be regarded as a ruminant obstructionist in the company of men of action.
—Louis M. Spadaro, “Averages and Aggregates in Economics,” in On Freedom and Free Enterprise: Essays in Honor Ludwig von Mises, ed. Mary Sennholz (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2008), 140.
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