Friedrich Hayek

Friedrich August von Hayek, CH (8 May 1899 – 23 March 1992) was an Austrian-British economist and political philosopher. He became known because he strongly defended liberalism and free-market capitalism. He was against too much central control of the economy and society. He thought that forms of government like socialism were not good for the economy, and damaged freedom of the individual. Hayek's signature work, The Road to Serfdom, refers to the consequences of socialism.

He was one of the most important economists and political philosophers of the 20th century.Edward Feser (ed) 2007. The Cambridge Companion to Hayek. Cambridge University Press. p13  He was one of the most important members of the Austrian School of economics. He also had many ideas in the fields of jurisprudence and cognitive science. He shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Economics with his rival Gunnar Myrdal. The award was for their work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations; also for their analysis of the inter-dependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena. He also received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991. He is thought to be one of the major causes of change from the Keynesian policies of the first part of the 20th century. Instead of governments handling the details of the economy, they went back towards classical liberalism in the 1980s and later. This happened most clearly in the 1980s in the U.S.A. (under Ronald Reagan) and the U.K. (under Margaret Thatcher).

 Main books 
 Profits, interest and investment: and other essays on the theory of industrial fluctuations, 1939.
 The road to serfdom, 1944. 
 Individualism and economic order, 1948. 
 The counter-revolution of science: studies on the abuse of reason, 1952. 

 Law, legislation and liberty (3 volumes)
Volume I. Rules and order, 1973. 
Volume II. The mirage of social justice, 1976. 
Volume III. The political order of a free people, 1979. 
 The fatal conceit: the errors of socialism, 1988. 

 Related pages
 Constitutional economics
 Political economy

 References 

Category:1899 births
Category:1992 deaths
Category:Austrian Nobel Prize winners
Category:Academics of the University of London
Category:British economists
Category:British Nobel Prize winners
Category:British philosophers
Category:Companions of Honour
Category:Libertarians
Category:Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom
Category:Austrian philosophers
Category:University of Chicago faculty
Category:Nobel Prize in Economics winners