ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION Reflection on the history and relevance of the Austrian school in economics can take different forms. There is some reason nowadays to frame that reflection in the following, more specific way. The part of the world from which Austrian economics originated is of late more or less unstable. The various political-economic institutions that had become so familiar in the course of forty years, with a sharp dividing line between a Western and an Eastern part of Europe, are no longer taken for granted. In the former a certain renewal of the political-economic order seems to be getting under way. In the latter the old order has been rapidly falling apart, but the hopefully expected introduction of adequate new socio-economic arrange ments has proven to be difficult both in design and application. As yet an underlying concept for a new political-economic order for the whole of Europe seems lacking. In this context it may be asked: what message does (neo-)Austrian economic thinking have for (re-)shaping the economic institutions of this part of the world to the benefit of all the peoples concerned?
