Jörg Guido Hülsmann (born 18 May 1966) is a German-born economist who studies issues related to money, banking, monetary policy, macroeconomics, and financial markets. Hülsmann is professor of economics at the University of Angers’ School of Law, Economics, and Management.
He is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, a corresponding member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, and a Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute. He is a vice-president of the international Property and Freedom Society, a board member of the Association des économistes catholiques[2] in France, and a scientific board member of the Hayek-Gesellschaft[3] in Germany, of the Austrian Institute of Economics and Social Philosophy,[4] and of the International Academy for Philosophy[5] in Liechtenstein. Hülsmann has been the inaugural laureate of the international Franz Čuhel Prize for Excellence in Economic Education[6] and the 2023 laureate of the Hayek-Medaille.[7]
Economists such as Eugen-Maria Schulak and Herbert Unterköfler consider him to be one of the most important contemporary Austrian economists in Europe, next to Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Jesús Huerta de Soto.[8] In the wider heterodox-economics community striving for pluralism in economics he is regarded as a leading expert and speaker.[9] He has been interviewed in various media outlets all throughout Europe.[10]
Life
Hülsmann went to high school in a town with "the highest communist voter percentage in all of Western Germany" and started public speaking at the age of 15.[11] After mandatory military service, he went on to study industrial engineering (Wirtschaftsingenieurwesen) at Technische Universität Berlin, from 1986 to 1992. In the 1991–92 academic year, he participated in an exchange program with Toulouse Business School in France. There he wrote a thesis comparing the neo-marxistregulation school to the ordo-liberalFreiburg School. He also started studying the writings of the Austrian School. After the year in Toulouse, he returned to Berlin for doctoral studies under Hans-Hermann Lechner and obtained his PhD in economics in 1996.[12] In January 1997, Lew Rockwell commissioned Hülsmann to write a Mises biography, a project that he would eventually complete in 2007. In 2004, he was appointed to a full professorship at the University of Angers.
Academic authorship
Hülsmann is the author of eight books, has edited or co-edited six other books, and published numerous journal articles and book chapters. His writings have been translated into twenty languages.[13]
The Last Knight of Liberalism is the only full-blown biography of Ludwig von Mises and Hülsmann’s most-cited publication.[17] It received a slating from Bruce Caldwell,[18] while the other reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. Economic historian Robert Higgs praised it as "a magnificent scholarly achievement."[19] In a lengthy review, the German national newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, called it "a literary event" and considered the work to "set standards" of biographical work.[20] In September 2016, the Renmin University of China organized a full-day conference around the Chinese edition of the book.[21]
In his 2024 book Abundance, Generosity, and the State, he studies the different ways through which economic goods are gratuitously provided and received .[22] Philosopher David Gordon praised the book with these words: "It is rare to encounter a book that has the potential to reshape the way we look at economics, but Guido Hülsmann has done exactly that in Abundance, Generosity, and the State. Hülsmann is one of the leading theorists of the Austrian School, but he has always looked at issues in an original way, and that quality is manifested 'abundantly' in this outstanding book."[23]
He has also become known as an economist who correctly anticipated the financial crisis of 2001;[24] as a staunch critic of fractional-reserve banking;[25] as a critic of the time-preference theory of interest;[26] for his "reconsideration" of Austrian Capital Theory, opening new perspectives on the venerable Cambridge capital controversy;[27] and as a proponent of the idea that economic laws are counterfactuala priori laws, rather than empirical regularities.[28]
Teaching
Hülsmann directs an English-language master’s program in Law and Finance,[29] and co-directs a double-major bachelor program in Law and Economics (in French)[30] at the University of Angers. He has directed doctoral theses at the University of Angers and been involved in doctoral research at other universities.[31]
Hülsmann has written for various press outlets in Europe, for example, for national magazines such as Schweizer Monat, La Tribune, Die Zeit, and Der Standard, and for business magazines such as Wirtschaftswoche.[33] For several years, he has authored a monthly column for the German libertarian magazine, eigentümlich frei.[34]
^See L. Fischer et al., Rethinking EconomicsArchived 2020-05-25 at the Wayback Machine (London: Routledge, 2017), chap. 3. The Glasgow Economic Forum 2017Archived 2016-06-01 at the Wayback Machine website portrays hims as "one of the foremost Austrian economists in the world, most well-known for his work on fiat money, inflation and culture. His 2007 thousand-page long detailed biography of Ludwig von Mises and his 2008 award-winning book The Ethics of Money Production are among the most-read not just for those interested in Austrian economics but for every aspiring economist." In the French weekly news magazine, L'Express(5 Jan. 2011)Archived 2020-11-30 at the Wayback Machine, accessed at 2017-06-22, he is portrayed as one of ten scholars who "boost research and higher education in Angers."
