His work in economics earned him a position as Austria's Finance Minister, a post he held three times.

A Lawyer by training, Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk began studying economics after reading Carl Menger's writings. His major work, Capital and Interest, explored in more detail the relation of time and value put forth by Menger.

According to Menger, time played a crucial role in economic processes, as market conditions at the beginning of production are usually not the same as at the end. This idea led directly to Boehm-Bawerk's Time-Preference Theory, which claimed that the uncertainty of market conditions affected the value of goods produced. In fact, the longer production takes, the less value those goods will have.