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den Hauwe, Ludwig Van --- "Friedrich August von Hayek (1899–1992)" [2005] ELECD 165; in Backhaus, G. Jürgen (ed), "The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics, Second Edition" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2005)

Book Title: The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics, Second Edition

Editor(s): Backhaus, G. Jürgen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845420321

Section: Chapter 41

Section Title: Friedrich August von Hayek (1899–1992)

Author(s): den Hauwe, Ludwig Van

Number of pages: 14

Extract:

41 Friedrich August von Hayek (1899­1992)
Ludwig Van den Hauwe


Biographical note
Friedrich August von Hayek, a central figure in twentieth-century economics
and a representative of the Austrian tradition, 1974 Nobel laureate in eco-
nomics, was born on 8 May 1899, in Vienna, then the capital of the
Austro-Hungarian empire. Following military service as an artillery officer in
the First World War, Hayek entered the University of Vienna, where he
attended the lectures of Friedrich von Wieser and obtained doctorates in
jurisprudence (1921) and political science (1923). After spending a year in
New York (1923­24), Hayek returned to Vienna where he joined the famous
Privatseminar conducted by Ludwig von Mises. In 1927 Hayek became the
first director of the Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research. On an
invitation from Lionel Robbins, he delivered four lectures entitled `Prices and
production' at the London School of Economics in 1931 and subsequently
accepted the Tooke Chair. He was a vigorous participant in the heated debates
that raged in England during the 1930s concerning monetary, capital and
business cycle theories. Hayek was to become the only intellectual opponent
of John Maynard Keynes (see Caldwell, 1995). As an outgrowth of his
participation in the debate over the possibility of economic calculation under
socialism (Hayek, 1948 [1980], 119­208), the focus of Hayek's research
shifted during the late 1930s and early 1940s to the role of knowledge and
discovery in market processes, and to the methodological underpinnings of
the Austrian tradition, ...