Mises Institute

The Mises Institute was founded in 1982 by Lew Rockwell, who was chief of staff to Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul; previously Rockwell had been editor for the conservative Arlington House Publishers and had worked for the far-right John Birch Society and the traditionalist Hillsdale College. Rockwell received the blessing of Margit von Mises (Ludwig's widow) during a meeting at the Russian Tea Room in New York City, and she was named the first chairman of the board. According to Rockwell, the institute was meant to promote the contributions of Ludwig von Mises, who he feared was being ignored by libertarian institutions financed by Charles Koch and David Koch. As recounted by Justin Raimondo, Rockwell said he received a phone call from George Pearson, of the Koch Foundation, who had said that Mises was too radical to name an organization after or promote.

The original academic vice president of the Mises Institute was Murray Rothbard, an influential right-wing libertarian activist and writer who had studied under Ludwig von Mises; Rothbard was a leading figure in the development of anarcho-capitalism and had also been a Cato Institute co-founder. Ron Paul, the Texas Republican congressman who would later run for president of the United States, was named a distinguished counselor and assisted with early fundraising. A timber company owner also contributed funds.

Judge John V. Denson assisted in the Mises Institute becoming established at the campus of Auburn University. Auburn was already home to some Austrian economists, including Roger Garrison. The Mises Institute was affiliated with the Auburn University Business School until 1998 when the institute established its own building across the street from campus.

The Mises Institute established the Review of Austrian Economics peer-reviewed academic journal in 1986. In 1998, the Mises Institute replaced the journal with the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, while the Review of Austrian Economics was transferred to George Mason University.

The Mises Institute aligned itself with what Rothbard called the Old Right, with "a defense of the gold standard, military isolationism, and 'traditional morality' and opposition to fiat money, supranational institutions, and 'forced integration'", according to academics Niklas Olsen and Quinn Slobodian. Rothbard and Rockwell coined the name "paleolibertarians" for socially right-wing libertarians like themselves. They forged a "paleo alliance" between paleolibertarians and paleoconservatives in the form of the John Randolph Club in 1989, which allied the Mises Institute and the paleoconservative Rockford Institute. Figures at the Mises Institute were associated with neo-Confederate positions, and the institute held conferences about secession, including one in 1995 in Charleston, South Carolina, where the American Civil War had begun. After Rothbard's death in 1996, his protege Hans-Hermann Hoppe became a leading anarcho-capitalist figure of the institute and is known for his anti-democratic writing. In a 2000 report, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) said that the Mises Institute had shown "recent interest in neo-Confederate themes" and that Rockwell, the institute's founder, had "argued that the Civil War 'transformed the American regime from a federalist system based on freedom to a centralized state that circumscribed liberty in the name of public order.'" Kyle Wingfield wrote a 2006 commentary in The Wall Street Journal that the Southern United States was a "natural home" for the institute, as "Southerners have always been distrustful of government," with the institute making the "Heart of Dixie a wellspring of sensible economic thinking."

By 2011, The Economist said, the Austrian School economics championed by the Mises Institute had "won few mainstream converts". But it noted the Mises Institute's growing presence on the internet as well as its facilities in Auburn including an amphitheater, conservatory, recording studio and library. The political scientist George Hawley described the Mises Institute in 2016 as "the intellectual epicenter of the radical libertarian movement in the United States". As of 2022, about 30 Mises Institutes had been created worldwide. While some are no longer operational, some such as the Instituto Rothbard in Brazil have gained political influence.