The exchange paradigm: Where to now? Meir Kohn Published online: 17 April 2007 # Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2007 Abstract This essay restates the main conclusions of “Value and Exchange,” discusses three possible directions of research that flow from it, and evaluates their likely impact on the economics profession. The three directions are (1) the application of the distinction between value paradigm and exchange paradigm to the elucidation of the history of economic thought, (2) formal theorizing within the framework of the exchange paradigm, and (3) empirical work informed by the insights of the exchange paradigm. Keywords Value paradigm . Exchange paradigm JEL Codes B4 . B5 It is gratifying that my paper “Value and Exchange” has stimulated the writing of the articles brought together in this issue of the Review of Austrian Economics. I am very grateful to Richard Wagner and to Peter Boettke for their efforts in bringing this project to fruition. I have been asked to restate here what I see as the main conclusions of “Value and Exchange” and to elaborate on what these might mean for the future direction of economic research. My first aim in writing “Value and Exchange” was to distinguish between two very different theoretical approaches to understanding the economy. The first, which I called the value paradigm, has its origins in the research programs of Hicks and Samuelson. It seeks to understand the economy in its entirety in terms of value-theoretic equilibrium. The second approach, which I called the exchange paradigm, encompasses a number of disparate research programs that share a rejection of the assumptions and the perspective of the value paradigm. They tend to view the economy not from the top down, in terms of the implications of overall equilibrium, but from the bottom up in terms of the problematics of individual transactions. This second approach is less mathematical and more institutional; it is therefore less precisely articulated and more difficult to summarize. I argue in “Value and Exchange” that these two approaches to economic theory are incompatible. Any effort to “mix and match” the two—hybrid theory—only in logical incoherence and error. Rev Austrian Econ (2007) 20:201–203 DOI 10.1007/s11138-007-0020-6 M. Kohn (*) Department of Economics, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA e-mail: Meir.G.Kohn@Dartmouth.EDU