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What Makes Economics Scientific?
Episode 526

What Makes Economics Scientific?

The Human Action Podcast · Mises Institute

November 17, 2025

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Show Notes

Prompted by an online debate about whether economics belongs with the hard sciences, Bob reviews common defenses of mainstream practice and explains why they don’t settle the scientific status of the field. He outlines the Mises–Rothbard view: economics as praxeology (logic of action), closer to geometry than laboratory testing, with core insights on opportunity cost, incentives, prices, money, and policy constraints that don’t depend on forecasting the exact timing of crashes.

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Topics

Austrian Economics OverviewOther Schools of Thought