In the conversation Abby explained that Austrian economics is best understood as a distinct tradition of economic thought that emerged from Carl Menger and the Methodenstreit, and later developed through figures such as Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and, more recently, Israel Kirzner. She set out the school’s core themes: methodological individualism, subjectivism, purposive human action, the limits of knowledge, and a focus on processes rather than static equilibria. As she put it, Austrian economics is concerned less with fixed end states than with an “unfolding” process of coordination and discovery, in which prices, profit and loss, and private property help individuals adjust to changing circumstances.
A central theme of the conversation was how Austrian economics approaches policy. Abby noted that the tradition often produces scepticism about ambitious top-down intervention, not because it offers a rigid ideological programme, but because it emphasises how little any one actor or institution can know. Her discussion of Mises’s example of price controls, and of Hayek’s idea of spontaneous order, illustrated the Austrian concern with unintended consequences and the limits of central direction. She also highlighted the tradition’s lasting influence on the wider profession, arguing that ideas once distinctive to Austrian economics, including the importance of institutions, entrepreneurship, subjectivism and comparative institutional analysis, have since travelled well beyond the school itself. One of her most memorable lines was Peter Boettke’s phrase that “markets are like weeds”: they emerge repeatedly, even under adverse conditions.
The final part of the interview turned to Hall’s work on the political economy of conflict, terrorism and counter-terrorism. She explained how an Austrian lens changes the analysis by shifting attention away from abstract entities such as “the state” and back to individuals making choices within institutional constraints. That perspective, she argued, is especially useful in studying terrorism, counter-terrorism and war, where good data are often limited but where means-ends reasoning can still illuminate how actors adapt to incentives and changing constraints. In discussing the contemporary international environment, Hall connected this framework to current tensions around US foreign policy, executive power and the risks of progressive intervention, suggesting that military action can vividly demonstrate the Austrian concern that one intervention often leads to further, unintended consequences.
Abby Hall is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Tampa. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute and a Senior Affiliated Scholar with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She received her PhD in Economics from George Mason University, and her research focuses on Austrian economics, political economy, defence and peace economics, and the economics of militarism and US foreign policy. Her recent books include How to Run Wars: A Confidential Playbook for the National Security Elite (2024), with Christopher Coyne, and The Political Economy of Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and the War on Terror (2023), with Anne Bradley and Christopher Coyne.
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