“Our debt to Hayek is very substantial. He helped to establish a freedom-based approach of evaluation through which economic systems can be judged (no matter what substantive judgments we arrive at). He pointed to the importance of identifying those services that the state can perform well and has a social duty to undertake. Finally, he showed why administrative psychology and propensities to corruptibility have to be considered in determining how states can, or cannot, work and how the world can, or cannot, be run.”

Austrian economist and philosopher

Friedrich August von Hayek was an Austrian economist and philosopher. He was a notable member of the Austrian school of economics, and is best known for his work in political economy, political philosophy, and intellectual history. He shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Gunnar Myrdal for work on money and economic fluctuations, and for showing how economic, social, and institutional forces depend on one another. He is also widely remembered for his account of how prices convey information, an idea that became an important contribution to economics.