Are You an Austrian?

Ludwig von Mises Institute ^

[logician2u]

Are You an Austrian?

Take the following quiz of 25 questions on economic issues (or go to truncated 10-question version). Click on the answer that most describes your view. You must answer all 25. Submit your quiz, and get your score emailed to you. There will be no follow up emails. (Q&A prepared with the assistance of Randall Holcombe, Peter G. Klein, Robert Murphy, D.W. MacKenzie, Joseph Stromberg, and Mark Thornton&?none of whom bear final responsibility for the answers.)

The method and scoring of the quiz will be revealed once you submit your answers. Essential sources for understanding the Austrian School intellectual framework are the Ten Must Haves from the Mises Institute catalog and the Austrian Study Guide. (Professors who want to use a version of this quiz in their classroom can email quiz manager.)

[steveegg]

Are you qualified to be Fed Chairman?

If my score of 84 (mostly Austrian sprinkled with a dash or 2 of Chicago) means anything, not in the current form of the Fed.

[Burkeman1]

scored 82.

[Moonman62]

Why do a quiz? Why not just come out and say what the Austrians stand for? It's like that quiz a while back to see if you were Libertarian. It's very misleading, and apparently didn't work. The LP is still below the single digits.

[Greybird]

I scored 98. If the differences between the Austrian and Chicagoite descriptions of the nature of time preference and interest had been more clear, it would have been 100.

What wasn't terribly surprising was how often the Chicagoite, Keynesian, and Socialist preconceptions came out being essentially the same. That is, if you reduced them to philosophic essentials. They all insist upon a positive and productive role for some degree of State control. Only the Austrian viewpoint seriously takes up Thomas Paine's view of government as "at best a necessary evil, and at worst an intolerable one."

Yes, I am an Austrian ... Mises' version, not the Governator's.

[Starwind]

I think the official Fed Chairman range is 0-25.

I had 83 (17 Austrian, 7 Chicago, 1 Keynesian (the shame, the horror) on the 25 question quiz...

[philetus]

How come #1 doesn't have "My $hit is my $hit"?

[Liberal Classic]

Particularly interesting is that Keynesian and Socialist economic thought are only different to degrees.

[Liberal Classic]

Now, *that* is an amusing post. :)

[arete]

Obviously, you've been studying.

Richard W.

[Torie]

46 out of 100 for me. I was unhappy with the selection of the choices presented on many of the questions, perhaps because I "know" too much about economics.

For example, on economic growth (per capita prosperity might be a better term), the educational/skill level of the populace is a key component, and that was not mentioned. Also, certain kinds of subsidized research that generate positive economic externalities are important (just ask the companies that hang around research factories like Stanford, Harvard, U of Texas, etc).

On equality, I would have clicked the box that stated that while equality was a desirable goal, it should be advanced through non coercive means, and by a vigorous program of facilititating equal opportunity among the young, through providing an opportunity for all to attend quality schools (subsidized for the needy), which themselves should be far more subject to market forces than they are now. Was that box available? Er, no.

[Torie]

By the way, I only took the short quiz. To wade through the other one, where I have to ponder which answer is the least bad, would take half a day. Some other time.

[Uri’el-2012]

bump

[logician2u]

Without taking the 25-question quiz, we'll never know if Torie might have boosted his score into the respectable 70s or even 80s.

Too bad.

I guess they don't call it the dismal science for nothing.

[logician2u]

All my other answers were Chicago, which I never heard of before,

C'mon gillman, ya never heard of Milton Friedman, "Free to Choose" and all?

Well, I guess it's possible.

. . and on question nineteen Free trade/globalism, there was no answer that I agreed with at all.

You aren't a Patsy, are you?

[Torie]

I will try to take it another time. As I say, I don't fully agree with most of the options, which makes it slow going.

[logician2u]

That's an unusual background for the study of economics, but not all that surprising. Lots of people with technical degrees are finding that their education lends itself well to learning econ, especially in the Austrian school.

Just a hunch, but I suspect it goes down a lot easier not having been exposed to Samuelson, Keynes, et al as undergraduates. As Torie's example illustrates, knowing too much about what passes for economics can be a detriment to further learning. Dismal science burnout, maybe?

[logician2u]

Ya dun gooood on econ, myte. Ya cud stand to brush up on ur geography, though.

Austria got no shrimp, no barbies, just beautiful women -- or so I'm told.

[logician2u]

scored 82.

Good for you, Burkeman.

I would expect you had no trouble with questions 22 and 24?

[Burkeman1]

I actually scand the whole test. And didn't really read every single description.

Nor sure abour 22 or 24?

Just kinda skimmed my way through it.

[logician2u]

Why not just come out and say what the Austrians stand for?

People who wish to know what the Austrians stand for have plenty of opportunities just by visiting the Ludwig von Mises Web site or a number of other places on the Web. They won't read it in the daily papers, though, or see it on Fox News.

The idea of a quiz, I believe, is to awaken the latent Austrian in some of us who were otherwise unaware of the Austrian School. (See Agnes Heep's reply, #30 above, as an example.)

Giving FReepers the quiz (at least the ones who are willing to spend the necessary 30 minutes or so and report their scores) lets us know, within a range, who are the believers in free-market capitalism, who think the government needs to regulate the economy, and (may G-d forbid!) who among us are died-in-the-wool socialists.

The quiz also is a learning tool, I think, for those whose education ended with high school.

It in no way resembles that other quiz you refer to, which is political in nature. Did you see anything about politics in the "Are you an Austrian" quiz?

I am sorry you have a negative attitude, but that is a problem for you to address, not for me.