An Interview of Israel Kirzner

Pete Boettke and I were in New York last week to interview Israel Kirzner. We talked to him for more than three hours. The reason why we met with Kirzner and had a long discussion about his work is that we are editing his complete works in 10 volumes. This will be published by Liberty Fund and the first volume should hopefully be available before the end of the year. The full interview will be included later on.

We discussed many of the fundamental issues in his work. Professor Kirzner was very insightful and was comfortable discussing the most controversial aspects of his work. For instance, he explained why he does not believe there is an entrepreneurial process at work with regard to institutions, but this doesn’t mean there is no entrepreneurship. The distinction between the two concepts (entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial process) is one that he has made in his work. However, it became clearer in mind as we spoke to him, even though I was already familiar with his paper on the limits of the market.

The interview, along with that done by Stephen Boehm and the one published in the AEN (see here), will be a very good source of information for those who want to deepen their knowledge of Kirzner’s work.