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After completing his studies he entered the Austrian Ministry of Finance. He spent the 1880s at the University of Innsbruck (1881-1889). During this time he published the first two (out of three) volumes of his magnum opus, Capital and Interest.
In 1889 he was called to Vienna by the Finance Ministry to draft a proposal for direct tax reform. The Austrian system at the time taxed production heavily, especially during wartime, providing massive disincentives to investment. Boehm-Bawerk's proposal called for a modern income tax, which was soon approved and met with a great deal of success in the next few years.
He then became Austrian Minister of Finance in 1895 and his image was on the one-hundred schilling note, he was to serve briefly and again on another occasion, although a third time he remained in the post from 1900-1904. As Finance Minister he fought continuously for strict maintenance of the legally fixed gold standard and a balanced budget. In 1902 he eliminated the sugar subsidy, which had been a feature of the Austrian economy for nearly two centuries. He finally resigned in 1904, when the increased fiscal demands of the army threatened to unbalance the budget. Economic historian Alexander Gerschenkron criticized his "penny pinching, 'not-one-heller-more-policies'," and lays much of the blame for Austria's economic backwardness on Böhm-Bawerk's unwillingness to spend heavily on public works projects. Joseph Schumpeter praised Böhm-Bawerk's efforts toward "the financial stability of the country."
He returned to teaching in 1904, with a chair at the University of Vienna. He taught many students including Joseph Schumpeter, Ludwig von Mises and Henryk GrossmannHenryk Grossmann ( 1881- 1950) was born in Krakow and studied law and economics in Krakow and Vienna. In 1925 he joined the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. He left Germany in the 1930s and returned to become Professor of Political Economy at L. He died in 1914.
Although he was a liberalClassical liberalism is a political and economic philosophy, originally founded on the Enlightenment tradition, that tries to circumscribe the limits of political power and to define and support individual rights. A comprehensive discussion of classical l he was not the radical libertarian that the label of Austrian economistThe Austrian School is a school of economic thought which rejects opposing economists' reliance on methods used in natural science for the study of human action and relationships through logic (or praxeology). Its most famous adherents are Friedrich Hayek suggests today. He wrote that he feared that unbridled free competition would lead to "anarchism in production and consumption." He wrote extensive critiques of Karl MarxKarl Heinrich Marx ( May 5, 1818 March 14, 1883) was an influential German economist, philosopher, social and political theorist. Although Marx addressed many issues in his career as a journalist and philosopher, he is most famous for his analysis of hist's economics in the 1880s and 1890s, and several prominent Marxists--including Rudolf HilferdingRudolf Hilferding ( 1877 1941) was a Marxist economist and a popularizer of the "economic" reading of Karl Marx. A leading Marxist theorist of his day, identified with the "Austro-Marxian" group. He was the main defender to the challenge to Marx by Austri--attended his seminar in 1905-06.