Microfoundations and macroeconomics at 20

In this short contribution, I summarize the four papers that comprise the symposium on Microfoundations and Macroeconomics: An Austrian Perspective and then address several themes that they raise. Specifically, I discuss the roles of capital and capital goods, human capital, adjustment costs after monetary shocks, W. H. Hutt’s understanding of idleness in the labor market, and the ways in which Austrian macroeconomic concepts can be deployed in doing economic history. I argue that intertemporal discoordination remains the key concept in Austrian macroeconomics and encourage present and future scholars to explore the coordinating role of capital and to challenge the institutional and historical contingencies that have defined the canonical Austrian business cycle theory story.