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Bloomington scholars are critical of the rather wide-spread “Model Platonism” of both Austrian and Chicago economists. Their empirical, B, perspective avoids the more extreme views of both Austrian “mindful economics,” A, and Chicago “mindless economics,” C. Yet the B is not a mere convex combination of A and C. It is rather a psychologically grounded empirical evidence-oriented approach that keeps clear of the non-empirical spirit of von Mises’ and Selten’s methodological dualism on one hand and the instrumentalist and behaviorist spirit of much of neo-classical economics on the other hand.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether existing capital structure target adjustment models are able to identify whether companies adjust their capital structures towards an (unobservable) target.

Existing capital structure target adjustment models are applied to a specific dataset by using different regression techniques (ordinary least square, fixed effect, Fama‐MacBeth, least square dummy variable “corrected”, SYS‐GMM).

Existing capital structure target adjustment models are not able to identify whether companies adjust their capital structures towards a target or not. They might indeed indicate target adjustment behaviour when companies' capital structures actually move away from their targets.

As target adjustment behaviour is often used as support for the trade‐off and against the pecking order theory, the “horse race” between both theories seems still to be open.

This paper highlights some of the fallacies of existing capital structure target adjustment models and demonstrates that the results obtained by those models can be highly misleading.

In his article “Geld” of 1909 Menger introduces a principal distinction between “outer exchange value of money” (purchasing power as measured by index numbers) and “inner exchange value of money,” which is affected solely “by influences originating on the side of money,” not on the side of the other goods. Menger chooses constancy of the inner value as policy goal to be achieved by appropriately regulating the quantity of money. In a growing economy, the general price level would have a declining tendency if the money supply were kept constant – a consequence which Menger does not make explicit, and even appears not to have been aware of. There is a fundamental inconsistency in his writings, since in his essays on the currency reform of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy of 1892 Menger warned against undesired consequences of deflation and inflation. Menger’s extensive discussion on how effects on purchasing power on the side of goods could be separated from those attributable to the side of money is referred in the light of then available monetary and price statistics. The inconsistency remains enigmatic. The last part of the present contribution gives a brief overview on how authors of later generations of the Austrian School (Wieser, Mises, Schumpeter, and Hayek), who coined the term “neutrality of money” for Menger’s constancy postulate followed or deviated from Menger’s concepts of the value of money.

The Nationalökonomische Gesellschaft (Austrian Economic Association, NOeG) provides a prominent example of the Viennese economic circles and associations that more than academic economics dominated scientific discourse in the interwar years. For the first time this chapter gives a thorough account of its history, from its foundation in 1918 until the demise of its long-time president, Hans Mayer, 1955, based on official documents and archival material. The topics treated include its predecessor and rival, the Gesellschaft österreichischer Volkswirte, its foundation in 1918 soon to be followed by years of inactivity, the relaunch by Mayer and Mises, the survival under the NS-regime and the expulsion of its Jewish members and the slow restoration after 1945. In particular, an attempt is made to provide a list of the papers presented to the NOeG, as complete as possible, for the period 1918–1938.

This chapter puts practices of everyday violence at the center of its analysis of colonial order. It examines the micro-mechanisms and manifold forms of threatening and hurting people. While a quotidian part of colonial life, such practices – accepted and normal within the colonial moral economy – are not normally seen as state actions. However, they reveal the workings of a powerful state: one that was built in an improvised fashion by low-level state representatives.

Based on an analysis of everyday police work in German Southwest Africa, this chapter offers a theoretical reframing of the colonial state that aims to provincialize the modern European state. It shifts the perspective away from the legal and institutional aspirations and structures of the state, instead turning attention to less rationalized processes: the idiosyncratic, makeshift, affective procedures of low-ranking officials. On this plane, everyday violence played a key role in generating a new social order. Ultimately, it had constructive effects which were a fundamental and inherent part of the colonial state’s power.