During and immediately after the global financial crisis of 2008, the Austrian movement gained popularity in a big way, and this was helped by the 2007 presidential campaign of congressman Ron Paul who warned of a coming real estate crash which did come to fruition. As the stock market bottomed in 2009, the Austrians, including Peter Schiff and Robert Murphy, warned that government stimulus would wreck havoc on the economy. They were wrong; the market recovered (yes I know it’s a false boom but this is about perception). Paul ran for president again in 2011 and gained an even larger grass roots following, eventually claiming that, “We’re all Austrians now!” at a rally.

Well, unfortunately for the congressman from Texas, we’re not all Austrian anymore. Since the end of the Great Recession, the Vienna school has lost popularity both on the political stage and on the web. Web traffic for the most popular Austrian economics website, Mises.org, is only around 30% of what it was at its peak in 2012.

While it’s obvious that the climb in popularity from 2009 – 2012 was from the aforementioned predictions and media coverage of Austrian-minded thinkers, it’s not completely clear what caused the fall. Let’s look at Austrian economics as a whole.

Google Search “Austrian Economics”

Again, we can see that people were showing the most interest online in 2012 and that trend quickly dissipated and is now at a fraction of what it was in terms of total searches. Thus, it’s interesting to ask; what caused this boom and bust in popularity for the Austrian school?