10 Economists Everyone Should Know About
Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992)
Another man who was greatly shaped by his experience in World War I, F A Hayek was born in Vienna, Austria, and served in the Austro-Hungarian artillery on the Italian front. Calling the war a “decisive influence” that was “bound to draw your attention to the problem of political organization,” Hayek pursued an academic career that eventually lead to a Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974. While he is best known for The Road to Serfdom (1944), it was The Constitution of Liberty (1960) that Margaret Thatcher carried with her and declared it to be what conservatives believe, even if Hayek himself declared he was no conservative in that very same book. Hayek’s impact is difficult to overestimate, given that the current economic consensus is that organized efforts do not require controls or plans.
