Public Choice and Austrian Economics

Austrian economics is a school of thought, while public choice is an area of inquiry, so one way to analyze the two together is to look at how the Austrian school approaches the subject matter of public choice. There are substantial and long-standing areas of commonality between Austrian ideas and the literature in public choice, but most Austrian school contributions to public choice are in the form of critiques of the ideas of public-choice theories rather than the development of an independent Austrian public-choice theory. Public choice analyzes collective decision-making processes, but Austrian economists often assume away collective decision-making issues to focus on knowledge problems that hinder government allocation of resources. For this and other reasons, an Austrian school analysis of collective decision-making processes remains underdeveloped. Austrian economics offers many insights that could be used to develop a more Austrian public-choice theory.