This article advances a blueprint for understanding the function entrepreneurs perform in international trade, by drawing on the connection between comparative advantage and entrepreneurial judgement. The mutual benefits of specialisation and exchange are demonstrated whenever we find a minimum relative difference between the productivity of resources; however, we argue in this article that the concrete pattern of specialisation—manifest in exchanges between individuals, firms or states—cannot be discovered from outside the market. Rather, comparative advantage has an irreducible entrepreneurial component, and international specialisation is an entrepreneurially driven phenomenon. We explain this by unearthing the connection between entrepreneurship (understood as judgement of the allocation of resources under uncertainty), the heterogeneity of capital and comparative advantage.

Neutral money plays a central role in contemporary macroeconomic theory, and is a live issue in recent monetary policy discussions. We challenge the opinion that Hayek's writings on neutral money have been influenced by, and are similar to, the work of Menger and Mises. We show, first, the significant alternative influence of Friedrich von Wieser on Hayek's work on the subject. Second, we rehabilitate a neglected method of monetary theorizing specific to Menger and Mises that rejects money neutrality both as a tool for investigating monetary phenomena and as the standard by which monetary regimes, and the market economy itself, should be evaluated. Examining this chapter in the history of economic thought can aid in a deeper reconsideration of the doctrinal foundations of modern monetary theory and policy.

The present paper outlines the development of international trade thought, from the pre-doctrinal contributions of Greek philosophers and scholastic theologians, through the theories of the first schools of economic thought, and up to modern and contemporary trade theories. I follow filiations of ideas in a chronological order, and show how theoretical investigation into the causes and effects of international trade—and the rationale for government intervention—has evolved over the last two centuries.

Although Pascal Salin’s desire to build bridges between the Austrian School and the Chigago School, as well as his efforts to smooth out the differences between schools of monetary thought, is admirable, it is difficult to see the need or the urgency to integrate the Austrian approach with other approaches. Salin has not yet made a convincing case that the Austrian approach to monetary issues is lacking, and indeed, there are several reasons why such reconciliation between the two traditions is impossible.