Austrian Eunomics and Market Process

What the paper says

This article introduces the notion of "Austrian eunomics". The research question addresses a fundamental gap in economic analysis of law for several Austrian scholars: how can the Austrian School and natural law theory be integrated to provide a coherent, normative criterion for evaluating legal and economic institutions? Building upon Lon Fuller's original conception of eunomics as "the science, theory or study of good order and workable arrangements," the core idea of the paper is to propose Austrian eunomics as a non-wertfrei field of research. As such, it recommends embracing Philippa Foot's "ethical naturalism" and a Humean reading of Friedrich Hayek, rather than a Hayekian reading of Hume on the aspect of fundamental conventions. The paper develops an "integration criterion" that combines "justice" with "efficiency-coordination," as proposed by Jesús Huerta de Soto, within a single methodological framework that integrates market processes and natural law. Although this paper calls for developments in implicit price theory—its "analytical lens"—and background theories, it constitutes one of the first attempts to sketch an Austrian approach to Fuller's original project. It contends that despite the inherent challenges to such an approach, a joint perspective on the Austrian School, natural law, and constitutional law offers a new way to tackle challenges that are cross-disciplinary by their very nature, between intercoordination, exchanges, and power; that is, between law, economics, and politics.