Essays & News

Under the Antideficiency Act of 1884, the federal government of the United States may incur obligations or make expenditures authorized by appropriations. When budgetary limits are exceeded, new funds can only be provided by an act of Congress. When no agreement on new appropriations is reached between Congress and the White House, the government must […]

The talks between Germany’s Christian Democrats (the CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (the SPD) have ended in an agreement that will create a coalition of the biggest losers of last September’s federal elections. The parties’ rank-and-file members must still approve the deal. For Chancellor Angela Merkel and SPD leader Martin Schulz, the coalition is the only […]

Vernon Smith Prize 2017 Winners announced The 10th International Vernon Smith Prize for the Advancement of Austrian Economics was an essay competition sponsored and organized by ECAEF European Center of Austrian Economics Foundation, Vaduz (Principality of Liechtenstein). This years’ topic: Does Tolerance become a Crime when applied to Evil? The winners are: 1: Mattias Oppold (Germany) […]

Could Digital Currencies Make Hayek’s Denationalization of Money Dream Come True? And can a basket of cryptocurrencies be the new world monetary basis? Perhaps it is too early to answer these questions, as the cryptocurrencies and the blockchain revolution is only at its very beginning and digital moneys such as Bitcoin or Litecoin are still […]

by Paul Butler When monetary theory comes up in reference to Bitcoin, the work of Friedrich von Hayek is often invoked. I have read a number of claims that the Nobel laureate’s 1976 book, Denationalisation of Money,1 lays the theoretical foundation for the cryptocurrencies we see today. In this post, I will argue that the […]