Happy Birthday, Mario

by Steve Horwitz

I’m not sure when I first met Mario, but it was probably when I was in grad school at GMU in the late 80s. Mario probably remembers it better than I do, mostly because, as Pete Boettke and Dave Prychitko can confirm, I was not shy about imposing myself on more senior scholars. (Frankly, neither were they, but somehow I got the bad reputation.) Whatever the circumstances under which we first met, they were not reason to shun me in succeeding years.

What I can be pretty sure about is that the topic of conversation was Mario and Jerry O’Driscoll’s The Economics of Time and Ignorance. That book, along with Don Lavoie’s two books, appeared in 1985 just as I began my PhD studies. For those of us in the Austrian program at GMU, they were at the center of our intellectual focus. Mario and Jerry’s book offered a whole new perspective on Austrian economics and the dual reviews in Market Process from Kirzner and Lachmann sparked a debate that would define our time at GMU and the course of Austrian economics for the decade or two to follow.

Mario’s work is characterized by a combination of careful, patient scholarship and a willingness to challenge the status quo that is worth emulating. His contributions to the broad Austrian tradition have moved us forward in a variety of ways, and his role as part of the NYU program and other institution building efforts, such as the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics and the book series with Routledge, have helped to create the thriving community of scholars who are working on Austrian themes in 2018.

I am very proud to count Mario as a colleague and a friend, and on the occasion of his 70^th birthday, I both thank him for all he’s done for Austrian economics and wish him many, many more years of health and happiness.