Made an account just to say that San Jose State University's Economics department mainly teaches Austrian economics.

http://info.sjsu.edu/web-dbgen/catalog/courses/ECON155.html

Really?

http://info.sjsu.edu/web-dbgen/catalog/departments/ECON-cour...

Yes, all those subjects are taught with a focus on Austrian economic theory.

Having graduated with an Econ degree just 5 years ago, I can tell you that this is 100% false.

1. What are current open questions Austrian economists study?

2. Advances in Austrian economics in last 10-20 years?

This is serious question.

I have no idea. I'm not an Austrian, but I can tell you that stating they are "nonexistent" in modern academia is just wrong.

Go look up Peter Boettke at George Mason -- he is a current, publishing Austrian Economist (he gave a talk at my uni).

Lol. Non-existent as in they don't produce any important studies, hardly get cited, and don't influence mainstream economics. Apart from academia, they're non existent in industry or in government. The fact a few exist in universities doesn't make them relevant.

>Apart from academia, they're non existent in industry or in government.

As a point of order. They're non-existent in the parts of government that actually do economist work, but the political appointee positions are lousy with them.

And boy do they punch above their weight in the financial press, chambers of commerce, think-tank circuit, etc.

In other words, Austrians do very well in any place that's sustained through the largesse of plutocrats and political donors. I wonder why. . .

I also wish their school of thought had an adjectival form that didn't make it sound like I'm slandering an entire nationality. Some of my best friends are Austrians! But they're mostly leftists. . .

> financial press, chambers of commerce, think-tank circuit, etc.

Where? It seems most of the economists in these circles ascribe to the Friedman/Chicago school of thought.

> But they're mostly leftists. . .

Even though Austrian economics is associated with the right wing, right wing economists by and large have nothing to do with the Austrian school.

Friedman, Greenspan, Mankiw, Laffer et al are certainly not Austrians.

As the other commenter noted, I think there are several folks at Mason who are Austrian leaning. Don Boudreaux was someone whose writing I followed back in the late 20-aughts, I'm sure he's still doing work.

George Mason very much the case of the exception underlining the rule though: it's the go to place for Austrian economics, has massive Koch Foundation endowments to encourage it to emphasis Austrian economics in its teaching, and yet it's still populated by people who are somewhat sympathetic to Austrian ideas that write "why I am not an Austrian Economist" essays and has a pretty non-Austrian sounding syllabus.

I think the status of Austrian economics in academia is best represented by the Mises Foundation's short list of best places to study Austrian economics, which concedes "some only have a sympathetic faculty member" and warns that some places have a lot of mathematics...

Their list is extremely outdated, and represents a fairly narrow view of Austrians (most modern Austrians not affiliated with LvMI, which is the majority of them, do quite a bit of quantitative work where it's warranted).

GMU is still the center (it's an Austrian fusion, but there's still a LOT of Austrian stuff -- Bryan Caplan is the exception rather than the rule), but Texas Tech, Troy, SJSU, FSU, and a number of others have heavy representation. I can think of at least 25 universities off the top of my head with at least one open Austrian on faculty. And yes, syllabi aren't just Austrian stuff -- even Austrians want you to learn Economics, not just what Mises said about Economics.

Bitcoin/virtual currencies are a study in Austrian economics (free market for currencies instead of state/gov/central bank control)

Free market != Austrian economics. Also, the means by which virtual currencies are produced is controlled. And currencies/monetary policy is well within the realm of mainstream economics.

Austrians eschew almost all quantitative methods, all study of alt-coins is done within the framework of mainstream economics.

check out this paper by hayek arguing for denationalization of currency. free market doesn’t mean no control over creation of currency, just that they are created and traded by private enterprise instead of gov/central banks

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denationalization_of_Mon...

Most cryptocurrency proponents studiously avoid Hayek and other Austrians' conclusions that private currency would need backing with commodities to be credible, and that loans were the most appropriate model for private currency providers to make a profit though.

yea because Hayek wanted to create an actual viable market of competitive currencies while the vast majority of cryptocurrencies today are pump n dump schemes with little to no economic thought put into them and no long term business model. why would u want to peg and limit the value of your currency when there’s a chance you can get T-Pain to blow it up sky high on hype, you sell off and make your profit that way instead of the long term profitable way of loaning money and arbitraging interest rates the way banks do now. Hayek’s thesis is still very relevant and becoming moreso in my opinion as central banks further distort the markets through unprecedented (pre 2008) actions such as direct liquidity injections through trillions in bond purchases

I don't know where you went, but where I took my degree, the only mention of Austrian economics was a brief mention of Hayek and Mises in a history of economics thought course.