As someone on this board who claims to believe in Austrian economics, and also has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, I can assure you I know some math.

A year of calculus and a couple of other electives (discrete and a one quarter Diff. Eq seem to be the popular requirements at several places) is a good start. It's probably enough preparation to begin Ph.D. studies in economics. However, you'll need a good bit more if you want to do most stuff past the applied econometrics type stuff.

Just to let you know what I meant earlier (I didn't mean that to be mean)--I'd say a full year diff-eq class would be very useful for macro and a few other fields, a year-long real analysis class would be essential for all fields if you want to be theoretical, and I remember the finance people (and maybe some macro-types) taking a year long graduate-level prob. and stats class and a year long graduate level stochastic analysis class.

I'm probably forgetting a few other classes in there. Maybe PDEs (but I haven't had that and haven't felt behind because of that), maybe some other stuff.

And there's always the random stuff that comes up--I've looked a bit into (and taught myself) some stuff about chaotic systems and also a bit on graph theory (but I couldn't tell you a lot about it). But that sort of stuff isn't a general need, it just came up because of a specific problem I was working on.

Math for economics isn't even very complicated (relatively speaking). Even if you want to build a full fledged DSGE model you don't need to be a math genius.

For applied economics/econometrics it's probably more usefull to know data crunching oriented programming.

The point that a lack of mathematical aptitude makes one a bad economist is roughly right (and applies to, for example, most "Austrians"), but the idea that taking an advanced sequence of differential equations plus real analysis or whatever is sufficient to develop such mathematical aptitude is misguided. The reason that good economists are almost invariably also good mathematicians (with some limited exceptions) is because good economic reasoning requires the ability to precisely manipulate complicated logical structures. Cognitively this is often best achieved via some form of formal reasoning and communicated via a formal language, which gives those with a good mathematical grounding a massive advantage. In particular, simply acquiring mathematical toolkits (real analysis, diff eq, dynamical systems, etc) is missing the point, and is also why so many phd students with math degrees end up struggling to do good economics - partly because it is possible to excel in undergraduate math without understanding the difference between mathematics as a toolkit and mathematics as a (limited) mode of reasoning and communication.

you do realize Mises predicted the 2008 financial crisis almost 100 years before it happened almost verbatim in "Theory of Money and Credit"?

the thing is tha tif you actually read Human Action, Mises' mode of reasoning is extremely logical and mathematical. Just because he shuns econometrics (which if you read his reasoning laid out in chapters 1 and 2 of Human Action, is very well stated) does not mean he shuns mathematics.

lol
1)hyperinflation
2)if you keep saying that something is going to happen soon, for 100 years, you are bound to be right. Thats like saying that astrology is legit science, just because it is right couple of times out of hundred attempts.
3)Hayek ****ed up millions of lives during first depression and thank god nobody is listening to you clowns anymore.

The thing is, Mises method for proving things about economics is about as correct as Spinoza's method for proving things about morality and existence.

Just because they were inspired by the axiomatic method used in mathematics doesn't mean they're applying it correctly.

Elaborate.

That's exactly the point; this mode of verbal reasoning seems logical and precise to someone lacking "mathematical aptitude", but is in fact fraught with errors.

Also, this point has nothing to do with econometrics. You're missing the distinction between formal reasoning and quantitative reasoning.

I'd like to see some examples of the errors. Obviously Human Action is not completely free of errors, but usually when someone get specific with these, it's either some nitpick that doesn't affect the big picture, a misunderstanding of what is being said.

I'm not going to take the time to actually go through Human Action carefully just for the purposes of this forum, sorry. You'll need a far more dedicated poster for that.

Of course, colorful examples of egregious errors arising from such reasoning in the course of discussing economics abound in this forum. Just take a look at the Phone Booth-Zygote megathread about monetary economics from a while back, or Borodog's recent magnum opus on the Myerson-Satterthwaite theorem.

Thank you, I will check out those threads.

Some of them are too outdated. There is good material there though I think. We need to get phonebooth back in for round 2.0. I feel like I've grown a lot while he has stagnated (i have no evidence for this. its just a hunch). I admit to some holes in my ideas in the past, but it was just a matter of time before i worked out the kinks to get to a what i think is a pretty sound theoretical foundation at present. My essential ideas haven't changed but i can definitely express them more clearly in some instances and more importantly more formally in terms he's more likely to understand.