Finance Behind the Veil of Money, A Rejoinder To Dr. Braun

David Howden

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: In Finance Behind the Veil of Money, Eduard Braun (2014: 30-36) takes the minority view that opportunity costs are not only unnecessary but even unhelpful to understanding choice. In doing so he follows George Reisman (1996: 460) who also views the “doctrine of opportunity cost” as not only unnecessary to ascertain how one makes better decisions, but that its “sole contribution is obfuscation, not perception.” Both Braun and Reisman believe that it is unnecessary to include foregone alternatives in the calculus of cost since it implies that “one must suffer by virtue of possessing the very qualities that create one’s success [i.e., better opportunities]” (Reisman 1996: 460). Such a view errs by overlooking the difference between the actor’s ex-ante expectations of an action with the ex-post results. More importantly, it mistakes what role costs in general, and opportunity costs by extension, serve in economic theory.

Keywords: opportunity; cost (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A1 A11 A2 A22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe
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Published in Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 19.2(2016): pp. 178-186

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