I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Randall G. Holcombe 157
In addition to the faculty at South Royalton, I met a large number of younger scholars
who attended, as I did, to learn more about Austrian economics. Looking back at the list
of attendees, it is impressive to see how many of them have gone on to be leaders of the
contemporary Austrian school. I also attended the follow-up conference the next year in
Hartford, Connecticut, so in one sense I can claim Austrian connections that go back to
the beginning of the Austrian revitalization.
By the time I left graduate school I had a very good familiarity with Austrian economics,
but I remained very interested in the economic analysis of government, and much of
my academic research has been in the area of public choice. I wrote my dissertation under
Jim Buchanan, one of the founders of public choice, who has been a major influence on
my thinking, and who has been so helpful to me throughout my career. After graduate
school I taught at Texas A&M University for two years, where my first graduate assistant
was Bruce Benson, who had just entered the Ph.D. program there. As a result of that, I try
to take credit for all the work Bruce has done since, although people who know both Bruce
and me will not let me get away with that.
From Texas A&M, I moved to Auburn University where I was on the faculty for 11
years. The Auburn faculty at that time was young, and very free-market oriented, and I
was fortunate to have a number of excellent colleagues. Roger Garrison stands out among
them. He was one of the people I had met at South Royalton, and in a marketplace for
ideas that does not readily accept non-mainstream thinking, Roger’s steady success in
promoting Austrian macroeconomics has been inspirational. Leland Yeager was also a colleague
and friendly critic, and I learned much from him. Don Bellante was another Auburn
colleague with Austrian leanings, so at Auburn I was in a department that was very congenial
to the Austrian approach to economics. And I was at Auburn when Lew Rockwell moved
to town and started the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Lew’s first office at Auburn was right
next door to mine.
We started a Ph.D. program in economics while I was at Auburn, and the presence of
the Mises Institute helped us attract some of our best students. We had an evening Austrian
economics seminar where we exchanged ideas and had a chance to present our own work
for critical analysis from the group. The graduate students were full participants in the
seminar, and among the many fine students in that group, I recall Don Boudreaux, Roger
Koppl, Mark Thornton, and Sven Thommesen. My 1989 book, Economic Models and
Methodology, was written (in bits and pieces) for that seminar, and I owe much to the participants
for helping me develop the ideas in that book. All in all, Auburn was a wonderful
intellectual environment, and my only regret in mentioning the names I did is that I know
I have left out many.
In 1988 I took a faculty position at Florida State University, where I remain today.
Two of my colleagues who were instrumental in attracting me were Bruce Benson—my
former graduate assistant—and Jim Gwartney. Anyone familiar with Bruce’s work on law
will know what a privilege it is to have him as a colleague, and Jim is an excellent economist
with a strong free-market orientation. Jim and I have co-authored a number of articles since
I’ve been here, and I have been especially influenced by his emphasis on the importance of
institutions to the successful operation of a market economy. With Bruce’s emphasis on