The SDAE was formed in 1996 by a group of both junior and senior faculty who saw the need to create a professional organization for economists (and others) interested in the Austrian school. The number of Austrians with university positions and who were regularly attending professional meetings was beginning to grow at that time and the time was right to find a way to institutionalize this Austrian presence. One of the first things the Society did was to affiliate with the Southern Economic Association annual meetings, which were already pretty well attended by Austrians and fellow travelers.
The Society’s mission is to advance the ideas of Menger, Mises, and Hayek and other economists of the Austrian school through both internal development and interaction with the ideas of other related approaches to economics. We sponsor numerous panels and hold an annual meeting and dinner as part of the Southern Economic Association’s meetings. Those panels are among the best attended at the SEA meetings. Since our founding, we have grown to around 100 members from a long list of countries around the world. As part of our annual meetings, we now sponsor three writing contests: The Foundation for Economic Education prizes for the best book and article in Austrian Economics over the prior three years, the Don Lavoie Memorial Graduate Study Essay Competition, and the Carl Menger Undergraduate Essay Competition. Winners of the latter two competitions present their work on panels at the SEA meetings and all winners are recognized at our annual meeting.
Membership in the Society also offers the opportunity to subscribe to the Review of Austrian Economics at a substantial discount. The RAE is edited by Peter Boettke and is published quarterly by Springer. All papers are double-blind peer-reviewed and submissions have come from all over the world, averaging about 80 total per year, with an acceptance rate of around 20%. Since Boettke became editor, the journal has published papers by a number of major economists, both in and out of the Austrian tradition, including Nobel Laureates James Buchanan and Vernon Smith, as well as Luigi Zingales, Robert Axtell, and Brad DeLong. The journal also publishes each year’s SDAE Presidential Address.
