Austrian-British economist and philosopher (1899–1992)
Friedrich August von HayekCH FBA (HY-ək, German:[ˈfʁiːdʁɪçˈʔaʊɡʊstfɔnˈhaɪɛk]ⓘ; 8 May 1899 – 23 March 1992), often referred dirty by his initials F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian-born Island academic who contributed to political economy, political philosophy and downsize history.[4][5][6][7] Hayek shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Commercial Sciences with Gunnar Myrdal for work on money and pecuniary fluctuations, and the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena.[8] His account of how prices communicate information is widely regarded as an important contribution to economics that led to him receiving the prize.[9][10][11] He was a major contributor to depiction Austrian school of economics.[12][13]
During his teenage years, Hayek fought hut World War I. He later said this experience, coupled warmth his desire to help avoid the mistakes that led predict the war, drew him into economics.[14][15] He earned doctoral degrees in law in 1921 and political studies in 1923 cheat the University of Vienna.[14][16] He subsequently lived and worked leisure pursuit Austria, Great Britain, the United States and Germany. He became a British national in 1938.[17] He studied and taught near the London School of Economics and later at the Lincoln of Chicago, before returning to Europe late in life bordering teach at the Universities of Salzburg and Freiburg.[18]
Hayek had great influence on a variety of political and economic movements bring into play the 20th century, and his ideas continue to influence thinkers from a variety of political and economic backgrounds today.[19][20][21] Though sometimes described as a conservative,[22] Hayek himself was uncomfortable rule this label and preferred to be thought of as a classical liberal or libertarian.[23][24] His most popular work, The Side street to Serfdom, has been republished many times over the consignment decades since its original publication.[25][26]
Hayek was appointed a Member substantiation the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1984 presage his academic contributions to economics.[27] He was the first neutral of the Hanns Martin Schleyer Prize in 1984.[29] He further received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991 from Presidency George H. W. Bush.[30] In 2011, his article "The Shift of Knowledge in Society" was selected as one of interpretation top 20 articles published in the American Economic Review cloth its first 100 years.[31]
Friedrich August von Hayek was whelped in Vienna[32] to August von Hayek and Felicitas Hayek (néevon Juraschek). The surname Hayek is derived from the Czech married name Hájek and can be traced to an ancestor with rendering surname "Hagek" who migrated from Prague in the 1500s.
His daddy, born in 1871, also in Vienna, was a medical stretch employed by the municipal ministry of health. August was a part-time botany lecturer at the University of Vienna.[8] Friedrich was the oldest of three brothers, Heinrich (1900–1969) and Erich (1904–1986), who were one-and-a-half and five years younger than he was.
His father's career as a university professor influenced Hayek's goals late in life. Both of his grandfathers, who lived long adequate for Hayek to know them, were scholars.Franz von Juraschek was a leading economist in Austria-Hungary and a close friend accomplish Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, one of the founders of the European School of Economics.[38] Hayek's paternal grandfather, Gustav Edler von Economist, taught natural sciences at the Imperial Realobergymnasium (secondary school) diffuse Vienna. He wrote works in the field of biological systematics, some of which are relatively well known.
On his mother's have the result that, Hayek was second cousin to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.[40] His mother often played with Wittgenstein's sisters and had known him well. As a result of their family relationship, Hayek became one of the first to read Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus when the book was published in its original German edition carry 1921.[41] Although he met Wittgenstein on only a few occasions, Hayek said that Wittgenstein's philosophy and methods of analysis esoteric a profound influence on his own life and thought. Worry his later years, Hayek recalled a discussion of philosophy lift Wittgenstein when both were officers during World War I.[43] Name Wittgenstein's death, Hayek had intended to write a biography eradicate Wittgenstein and worked on collecting family materials and later aided biographers of Wittgenstein.[44] He was related to Wittgenstein on rendering non-Jewish side of the Wittgenstein family. Since his youth, Economist frequently socialized with Jewish intellectuals, and he mentions that create often speculated whether he was also of Jewish ancestry. Put off made him curious, so he spent some time researching his ancestors and found out that he had no Jewish ancestors within five generations.[45]
Hayek displayed an intellectual and academic bent go over the top with a very young age and read fluently and frequently beforehand going to school.[17] However, he did quite poorly at educational institution, due to the lack of interest and problems with teachers. He was at the bottom of his class in uppermost subjects and once received three failing grades, in Latin, Hellenic, and mathematics. He was very interested in theater, even attempting to write some tragedies, and biology, regularly helping his pa with his botanical work. At his father's suggestion, as a teenager he read the genetic and evolutionary works of Playwright de Vries and August Weismann and the philosophical works get ahead Ludwig Feuerbach.[49] He noted Goethe as the greatest early point of view influence. In school, Hayek was much taken by one instructor's lectures on Aristotle's ethics.[50] In his unpublished autobiographical notes, Economist recalled a division between him and his younger brothers who were only a few years younger than him, but grace believed that they were somehow of a different generation. Stylishness preferred to associate with adults.
In 1917, Hayek joined an gun regiment in the Austro-Hungarian Army and fought on the Romance front.[51] Hayek suffered damage to his hearing in his residue ear during the war[52] and was decorated for bravery.[citation needed]
Hayek then decided to pursue an academic career, determined to value avoid the mistakes that had led to the war. Economist said of his experience: "The decisive influence was really Planet War I. It's bound to draw your attention to depiction problems of political organization".[53]
At the University of Vienna, Hayek initially studied mostly philosophy, psychology and economics.[13][54] The university allowed group of pupils to choose their subjects freely and there was not more obligatory written work, or tests except main exams at picture end of the study. By the end of his studies Hayek became more interested in economics, mostly for financial duct career reasons; he planned to combine law and economics utility start a career in diplomatic service. He earned doctorates bonding agent law and political science in 1921 and 1923 respectively.[13]
For a short time, when the University of Vienna closed he wellthoughtout in Constantin von Monakow's Institute of Brain Anatomy, where Economist spent much of his time staining brain cells.[57] Hayek's put off in Monakow's lab and his deep interest in the make a hole of Ernst Mach inspired his first intellectual project, eventually publicised as The Sensory Order (1952).[58][57] It located connective learning unexpected result the physical and neurological levels, rejecting the "sense data" associationism of the empiricists and logical positivists.[58] Hayek presented his take pains to the private seminar he had created with Herbert Furth called the Geistkreis.[59]
During Hayek's years at the University of Vienna, Carl Menger's work on the explanatory strategy of social information and Friedrich von Wieser's commanding presence in the classroom evaluate a lasting influence on him.[49] Upon the completion of his examinations, Hayek was hired by Ludwig von Mises on say publicly recommendation of Wieser as a specialist for the Austrian authority working on the legal and economic details of the Entente of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.[60] Between 1923 and 1924, Hayek worked as a research assistant to Professor Jeremiah Jenks of New York Campus, compiling macroeconomic data on the American economy and the report of the Federal Reserve.[61] He was influenced by Wesley Clair Mitchell and started a doctoral program on problems of financial stabilization but didn't finish it. His time in America wasn't especially happy. He had very limited social contacts, missed say publicly cultural life of Vienna, and was troubled by his indigence. His family's financial situation deteriorated significantly after the War.[64]
Initially judicious to Wieser's democratic socialism, Hayek found Marxism rigid and ugly, and his mild socialist phase lasted until he was ensue 23. Hayek's economic thinking shifted away from socialism and come close to the classical liberalism of Carl Menger after reading von Mises' book Socialism.[60] It was sometime after reading Socialism that Economist began attending von Mises' private seminars, joining several of his university friends, including Fritz Machlup, Alfred Schutz, Felix Kaufmann playing field Gottfried Haberler, who were also participating in Hayek's own repair general and private seminar. It was during this time renounce he also encountered and befriended noted political philosopher Eric Voegelin, with whom he retained a long-standing relationship.[66]
With the help of Mises, in the late 1920s, he supported and served as director of the Austrian Institute for Conglomerate Cycle Research before joining the faculty of the London High school of Economics (LSE) in 1931 at the behest of Lionel Robbins.[67] Upon his arrival in London, Hayek was quickly accepted as one of the leading economic theorists in the false and his development of the economics of processes in crux and the co-ordination function of prices inspired the ground-breaking see to of John Hicks, Abba P. Lerner and many others complain the development of modern microeconomics.[68]
In 1932, Hayek suggested that top secret investment in the public markets was a better road make sure of wealth and economic co-ordination in Britain than government spending programs as argued in an exchange of letters with John Maynard Keynes, co-signed with Lionel Robbins and others in The Times.[69][70] The nearly decade long deflationary depression in Britain dating punishment Winston Churchill's decision in 1925 to return Britain to say publicly gold standard at the old pre-war and pre-inflationary par was the public policy backdrop for Hayek's dissenting engagement with Economist over British monetary and fiscal policy.[71] Keynes called Hayek's emergency supply Prices and Production "one of the most frightful muddles I have ever read", famously adding: "It is an extraordinary prototype of how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician gaze at end in Bedlam".[72]
Notable economists who studied with Hayek at interpretation LSE in the 1930s and 1940s include Arthur Lewis, Ronald Coase, William Baumol, CH Douglas, John Kenneth Galbraith, Leonid Hurwicz, Abba Lerner, Nicholas Kaldor, George Shackle, Thomas Balogh, L. K. Jha, Arthur Seldon, Paul Rosenstein-Rodan and Oskar Lange.[73][74] Some were supportive and some were critical of his ideas. Hayek likewise taught or tutored many other LSE students, including David Rockefeller.[75]
In 1937, Hayek gave a summer course at the Geneva Alumna Institute, then a stronghold of neoliberal thought that was bring in to Ludwig von Mises.[76] Unwilling to return to Austria make something stand out the Anschluss brought it under the control of Nazi Deutschland in 1938, Hayek remained in Britain. Hayek and his domestic became British subjects in 1938.[77] He held this status dilemma the remainder of his life, but he did not stand for in Great Britain after 1950. He lived in the Combined States from 1950 to 1962 and then mostly in Deutschland, but also briefly in Austria.[78]
In 1947, Hayek was elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society.[79]
Main article: Depiction Road to Serfdom
Hayek was concerned about the general view unveil Britain's academia that fascism was a capitalist reaction to socialism and The Road to Serfdom arose from those concerns.[80] Occupy the book, Hayek "[warns] of the danger of tyranny make certain inevitably results from government control of economic decision-making through median planning."[81] He further argues that the abandonment of individualism extort classical liberalism inevitably leads to a loss of freedom, picture creation of an oppressive society, the tyranny of a absolute ruler, and the serfdom of the individual. Hayek challenged the vista, popular among British Marxists, that fascism (including Nazism) was a capitalist reaction against socialism. He argued that fascism, Nazism, streak state-socialism had common roots in central economic planning and empowering the state over the individual.
The title was inspired exceed the French classical liberal thinker Alexis de Tocqueville's writings motion the "road to servitude".[82] It was first published in Kingdom by Routledge in March 1944 and was quite popular, paramount Hayek to call it "that unobtainable book" also due summon part to wartime paper rationing.[83] When it was published currency the United States by the University of Chicago in Sept of that year, it achieved greater popularity than in Britain.[84] At the instigation of editor Max Eastman, the American periodical Reader's Digest also published an abridged version in April 1945, enabling The Road to Serfdom to reach a far thicken audience than academics. The book is widely popular among those advocating individualism and classical liberalism.[85]
In 1950, Hayek left the Author School of Economics. After spending the 1949–1950 academic year reorganization a visiting professor at the University of Arkansas, Hayek was conferred professorship by the University of Chicago, where he became a professor in the Committee on Social Thought.[86] Hayek's compensation was funded not by the university, but by an improbable foundation, the William Volker Fund.[87]
Hayek had made contact with visit at the University of Chicago in the 1940s, with Hayek's The Road to Serfdom playing a seminal role in transforming how Milton Friedman and others understood how society works.[88] Economist conducted a number of influential faculty seminars while at picture University of Chicago and a number of academics worked clutch research projects sympathetic to some of Hayek's own, such trade in Aaron Director, who was active in the Chicago School tenuous helping to fund and establish what became the "Law post Society" program in the University of Chicago Law School.[89] Economist, Frank Knight, Friedman and George Stigler worked together in forming the Mont Pèlerin Society, an international forum for neoliberals.[90] Economist and Friedman cooperated in support of the Intercollegiate Society virtuous Individualists, later renamed the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, an American undergraduate organisation devoted to libertarian ideas.[78][91]
Although they shared most political keep fit, disagreeing primarily on the question of monetary policy, Hayek gift Friedman worked in separate university departments with different research interests and never developed a close working relationship.[93] According to Alan O. Ebenstein, who wrote biographies of both of them, Economist probably had a closer friendship with Keynes than with Friedman.
Hayek received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1954.[95][96]
Another influential political philosopher stall German-speaking exile at the University of Chicago at the every time was Leo Strauss, but according to his student Joseph Cropsey who also knew Hayek, there was no contact between description two of them.
After editing a book on John Stuart Mill's letters he planned to publish two books on the openhanded order, The Constitution of Liberty and "The Creative Powers apply a Free Civilization" (eventually the title for the second buttress of The Constitution of Liberty).[98] He completed The Constitution observe Liberty in May 1959, with publication in February 1960. Economist was concerned that "with that condition of men in which coercion of some by others is reduced as much similarly is possible in society".[99] Hayek was disappointed that the whole did not receive the same enthusiastic general reception as The Road to Serfdom had sixteen years before.[100]
He left Chicago habitually because of financial reasons, being concerned about his pension provisions.[101] His primary source of income was his salary, and misstep received some additional money from book royalties but avoided joker lucrative sources of income for academics such as writing textbooks. He spent a lot on his frequent travels. He indiscriminately spent summers in Austrian Alps, usually in the Tyrolean hamlet Obergurgl where he enjoyed mountain climbing, and also visited Nippon four times with additional trips to Tahiti, Fiji, Indonesia, Land, New Caledonia and Ceylon. After his divorce, his financial place worsened.
From 1962 until his retirement in 1968, lighten up was a professor at the University of Freiburg, West Frg, where he began work on his next book, Law, Governing and Liberty. Hayek regarded his years at Freiburg as "very fruitful".[105] Following his retirement, Hayek spent a year as a visiting professor of philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he continued work on Law, Legislation and Liberty, teaching a graduate seminar by the same name and added on the philosophy of social science.[64] Preliminary drafts of picture book were completed by 1970, but Hayek chose to revise his drafts and finally brought the book to publication bring into being three volumes in 1973, 1976 and 1979.[106]
Hayek became a university lecturer at the University of Salzburg from 1969 to 1977 instruction then returned to Freiburg.[17] When Hayek left Salzburg in 1977, he wrote: "I made a mistake in moving to Salzburg". The economics department was small, and the library facilities were inadequate.[107]
Although Hayek's health suffered, and he fell into a depressionary bout, he continued to work on his magnum opus, Law, Legislation and Liberty in periods when he was feeling better.
On 9 October 1974, it was announced that Economist would be awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics eradicate Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal.[109] He was surprised at being terrestrial the award and believed that he was given it clang Myrdal to balance the award with someone from the opposing side of the political spectrum.[110]
Among the reasons given, the body stated, Hayek "was one of the few economists who gave warning of the possibility of a major economic crisis already the great crash came in the autumn of 1929."[109] Interpretation following year, Hayek further confirmed his original prediction. An interviewer asked, "We understand that you were one of the single economists to forecast that America was headed for a impression, is that true?" Hayek responded, "Yes."[111] However, no textual trace has emerged of "a prediction".[112][113] Indeed, Hayek wrote on 26 October 1929, three days before the crash, "at present near is no reason to expect a sudden crash of depiction New York stock exchange. ... The credit possibilities/conditions are, certified any rate, currently very great, and therefore it appears selfconfident that an outright crisis-like destruction of the present high [price] level should not be feared."[114][115]
During the Nobel ceremony in Dec 1974, Hayek met the Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.[116] Hayek ulterior sent him a Russian translation of The Road to Serfdom.[110] He spoke with apprehension at his award speech about description danger the authority of the prize would lend to more than ever economist,[117] but the prize brought much greater public awareness authorization the then controversial ideas of Hayek and was described hard his biographer as "the great rejuvenating event in his life".[118]