William H. Wang 🇹🇼🇺🇦🇪🇸🇺🇸🇪🇺

I am pleased to share some good news: I have been granted official accreditation by ANECA as both Profesor Contratado Doctor and Profesor de Universidad Privada (Associate Professor, non-civil servant, Spain). Receiving these recognitions is an important academic milestone, and I am grateful for the opportunity to continue developing my career within Universidad Europea de Madrid, which is my primary academic home. From my first day here, I have felt a strong sense of collegiality and institutional support. I look forward to contributing to this university over the long term. At the same time, I remain fully aware that academic growth is a continuous process. There is always room to improve—in research, teaching, and service. Universidad Europea has provided me with an excellent platform to grow professionally, and I will continue to strive to fulfill my responsibilities with rigor, dedication, and integrity. Thank you to all colleagues and mentors who have supported me along the way.

"Thirty years after the repeal of the Corn Laws, the Political Economy Club in London, which had been founded in 1821 by advocates of economic liberty, celebrated the 100th anniversary of the publication of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations with a grand banquet dinner on the evening of May 31, 1876. ... An honored guest that evening was Leon Say (1826–1896), the French minister of finance and the grandson of the famous free-market, liberal economist Jean-Baptiste Say. He hailed the slow but important impact that Adam Smith’s ideas had and were having in France, in spite of the heavily protectionist sentiments there. Smith had inspired a free-trade intellectual undercurrent, especially through the impact of Jean-Baptiste Say’s writings that had been founded on Adam Smtih’s great work. Indeed, Leon Say said that in 1814, his grandfather traveled to Great Britain and while in Scotland went to Glasgow University and sat in the chair that Smith used while lecturing. Jean-Batiste Say, “buried his head in his hands, and — this was his expression — to bring back to France a spark of the master’s genius.”" fff.org/explore-freedo…

Apologies for joining the discussion late—I don’t usually engage in online debates. I do not question the a priori nature of economic theory. However, anyone can claim their deductions as correct. Without openness to logical scrutiny and critical examination, such claims risk becoming dogmatic rather than scientific.

@TheLostOddity @william_hs_wang Yes, I would assume so, from his wording. Maybe @william_hs_wang can confirm.

I am an Austrian School economist, and I believe that the core of economic theory is a priori. I am an anarcho-capitalist and a follower of Rothbard's economic theories. However, this does not mean I oppose Hayek's practical spirit in political reform, nor does it mean I oppose using quantitative methods to analyze current economic problems and make practical contributions to global freedom. I believe in learning by doing. I do not believe that what is self-deduced from a utopian world is a universal truth.

@PeterBoettke I think many people forgot a piece of history: Mises and Hayek did empirical research in Austria, both from the mainstream and from the Austrian world. Truly important to see the whole picture.

I think a lot of confusion impacts those encountering the ideas. First, Menger distinguished between exact theory, empirical-realistic theory, and empirical research (history as well as contemporary history/policy). Bohm-Bawerk similarly distinguished between theory, applied theory, and empirical analysis. In 1937, Hayek argued that the pure logic choice was necessary but not sufficient, it had to joined by the situational logic of context specific institutional analysis, and that combined provided the framework for empirical analysis. Second, Mises and Hayek were both very skilled empirical economists as their work at the Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research demonstrates. Hayek, in fact, learned time series analysis in NY during his 20s and brought that back to Vienna. The reason folks get tripped up is because of what folks think the purpose of statistical analysis is, and the problems identified with aggregation, and with theory absorption. Theory is not "tested" by statistical analysis in this for a variety of reasons. So the naive positivist agenda doesn't work according to these thinkers. But that doesn't mean that empirical work isn't critical to the scientific enterprise. It most certainly is -- the purpose of theory is in fact to aid us in empirical analysis (both history and contemporary history). The Austrian School from Menger onward is not working out the internal logic of an abstract model, but instead refining a set of theoretical constructs that enable the ordinary individual to rise to the height of observational genius through the use of these constructs. It is about understanding and explaining the real world -- how the world works; the human condition; the social order. I wish more folks would read Erwin Dekker's The Viennese Students of Civilization to get a sense of the intellectual context of the founding of the Austrian school, and to read Hayek's Nobel in depth and with care, and with that go back and read Human Action asking yourself how it came out of the Viennese Student of Civilization, and how it produced Hayek's pretense of knowledge critique of the practice of modern economics. I believe we would have a better dialogue about all these issues if we did that.

@PeterBoettke Well said!

The whole world has to know these facts.

The comments below in this post observed in that discussion suggest that a segment of Hoppe’s followers expresses views that can be characterized as homophobic, and in some other cases, racially exclusionary. This is concerning from both an ethical and an academic standpoint. More broadly, when any intellectual figure is treated as beyond criticism—where every statement is assumed to be inherently correct—the result is less a scholarly tradition and more a form of personal cult that risks detaching itself from rigorous scientific inquiry. While there is often an implicit mutual and tacit recognition between Austrian and neoclassical economists—grounded in a shared commitment to economic analysis—even when they disagree, such academic seriousness appears absent in this case. This raises important questions about the boundary between intellectual debate and ideological adherence.

Stanford University wins battle to keep diaries of Mao Zedong's secretary bbc.in/412MBfF

The Three Principles of the People will unify China.

This, like everything else, is a very superficial social movement by the contemporary left. This Asian man has essentially stated the essence of the matter.

In a recent commentary published on our university’s International Relations think tank website, I argue that the current situation is partly driven by the welfare state and the U.S.’s long-standing pattern of giving high and taking low in aid. relacionesinternacionales.media/analisis-inter…

.@ProfEngelhardt argues that human diversity drives comparative advantage. Billionaires emerge either by serving millions in markets or by leveraging political privilege. #AERC

New book chapter out: “Juegos, IA y Escuela Austriaca” (Dykinson, 2025). I explore how AI + game-based learning can transform economics teaching—shifting from passive learning to discovery, judgment, and entrepreneurship in the classroom. dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articu…

Let's be clear: Spain: enacts rent control -> no more homes Argentina: ends rent control -> tons of new homes Rent control is a better way to destroy cities than dropping bombs on them.

Milton Friedman couldn’t persuade Thomas Sowell to give up Marxism, but working for the federal government could.

Social democracy and democratic socialism share important intellectual roots with earlier collectivist traditions, and in practice the distinctions between them and more classical forms of socialism can at times become blurred. For this reason, attempts—such as Tony Blair’s “Third Way”—to reposition parties like the Labour Party toward the political center may face structural limits. While such efforts can moderate policy in the short term, the underlying ideological tendencies within these parties may continue to influence their long-term direction. This is why debates about the relationship between social democracy, socialism, and economic freedom remain both relevant and necessary in contemporary political discourse.

Spain froze rents and capped increases at 2%, but rent control is already cutting supply by up to 50% and not improving conditions for renters. Spain should follow Argentina, which ended rent control in 2023 and has seen housing supply rise 180%, reports Cato’s @hiperfalcon. ow.ly/k7Mx50YztmZ