Hayek's Work Research Articles

Неолиберализмът на Фридрих фон Хайек като опит за разобличаване на колективизма и централизираната икономика

The article is dedicated to the socio-philosophical legacy of Friedrich von Hayek, one of the founders of neoliberalism and a representative of the Austrian School of Economics. In this regard, this text is an attempt to rethink Hayek's work in three main aspects: as an initiator of the return of liberalism to its ideological foundations from the Enlightenment, as an ideologue of neoliberalism and as a consistent critic of Keynesian capitalism and socialism. Here are some weaknesses in his teaching, both in terms of capitalism and in terms of social liberalism and socialism.

How Hayekian is Sunstein's behavioral economics?

AbstractI comment on Sunstein's paper proposing ‘Hayekian behavioural economics’. In essence, Sunstein is merely renaming a familiar approach to normative economics, initiated in Sunstein and Thaler's seminal 2003 paper. I argue that this approach cannot fairly be described as in the spirit of Hayek's work. Sunstein's approach is based on a ‘constructivist’ conception of rationality that Hayek consistently criticized. Although both Hayek and Sunstein address ‘knowledge problems’, the two problems are fundamentally different. I develop what I claim are truly Hayekian critiques of Sunstein's claim that fuel economy mandates can be more Hayekian than carbon taxes.

Hayek's Spiritual Science

This article argues that Hayek's thought had a consistent epistemological core that he developed with the aim of undermining prevailing positivism and replacing it with a metaphysical and spiritualistic philosophy of science. This becomes clear when an intellectual-historical method is used to elucidate Hayek's psychological and methodological works. We see that the approaches and arguments he found most convincing were those of nineteenth-century neo-Kantianisms, Gestalt psychology, vitalism, phenomenology, and theological mathematician Georg Cantor. Hayek thought his spiritual science superior because it explained “the place where the human individual stands in the order of things,” thereby clarifying science's epistemic standpoint, but also its meaning. The article will be of interest to scholars of neoliberalism and contemporary politics because its reading of Hayek suggests that the allegiance between, and apparent attractiveness of, Hayekian and religious conservative thought may have something to do with their common claims to marry order, freedom, and purpose.

Hayek and the cryptocurrency revolution

The emergence of cryptocurrencies has been one of the most notable monetary phenomenon of the last decade. Many academics and analysts have found a clear precedent to this event in Friedrich Hayek's latest monetary work, Denationalization of money. The aim of this article is to analyze what we can learn about cryptocurrencies by re-reading this book. As will be proven, Hayek would surely have rejected the idea that Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies with similar characteristics could be accepted as money in the market. Furthermore, this paper will prove that a very close connection between Stablecoins and private money exists, following the Austrian economist’s predictions in a context of monetary competition.

Generality and knowledge: Hayek's constitutional theory of the liberal state

This paper examines Hayek's constitutional theory of the liberal state. Hayek argued powerfully that no central planner has sufficient knowledge to run an economy, and that no one has sufficient knowledge to determine ends for others. Pushed to their logical conclusion, these arguments would seem to prescribe the smallest possible state in both scope and size, or perhaps even no state at all. Elsewhere in his writings, however, Hayek explicitly endorsed government activity that goes far beyond a “night watchman” state (to include public works such as infrastructure, roads and bridge, as well as social insurance, conscription, a minimum safety net, and even countercyclical investment)—as long as state action was carefully constrained by a generality principle. After thoroughly setting forth Hayek's worries about knowledge and his proposals for acceptable station action, the paper synthesizes the two into a Hayekian constitutional theory of the liberal state, then closes with a brief discussion of some tensions in Hayek's work.

The Actual and the Rational. Hegel and Objective Spirit by Jean-François Kervégan

Reviewed by: The Actual and the Rational. Hegel and Objective Spirit by Jean-François Kervégan Allegra de Laurentiis KERVÉGAN, Jean-François. The Actual and the Rational. Hegel and Objective Spirit. Translated by Daniela Ginsburg and Martin Shuster. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2018. xxxiii + 384 pp. Cloth, $55.00 Kervégan's study of the (in)famous Hegelian statement reflected in the book's title ("What is rational, that is actual; and what is actual, that is rational") centers on three major themes: the existence and nature of "objective spirit," the meaning of "right" (or, as Kervégan prefers, "law"), and the (controversial) logical-metaphysical foundations of both. The book is organized into four parts: I, "The Law: the Positivity of Abstraction;" II: "The Vitality and Flaws of the Social;" III: "The State and the Political;" IV: "Figures of Subjectivity in Objective Spirit: Normativity and Institutions." In a brief disclaimer Kervégan specifies that this massive undertaking is intended not as a systematic interpretation of Hegel's political philosophy but as an explication of basic tenets and conundrums. A preface and preliminary open the volume; an epilogue closes it. In the preface, Kervégan declares his noncommitment to a metaphysical reading of Hegel's Realphilosophie in general, and of Objective Spirit in particular. But the immediately following discussion of "actuality," "reality," and "rationality" in Hegel indicates otherwise, showing Kervégan's thorough familiarity with and reliance on the Science of Logic. Part I (chapters 1–3) discusses various employments of Recht in Hegel's work between 1807 and 1830, with particular attention given to the [End Page 370] 1817/18 Natural Right Lectures and the 1820 Philosophy of Right (PhR). Kervégan's decision to use "law" (German Gesetz) instead of "right" to render Recht underestimates Hegel's reliance on the fundamental distinction between jus and lex in the Roman Corpus. This does not diminish the value of Kervégan's discussion, which encompasses not just Hegel's works but also 200 years' worth of literature (from Haym and Rosenzweig to Peperzak and Losurdo). Kervégan references to Kant's Doctrine of Right, indispensable for an appreciation of Hegel's, indulge the generic interpretation of Kant's juridical thought as "legalism." (This may be due to the conflation of Gesetz and Recht.) One consequence is that "fiat justitia, pereat mundus" (from Perpetual Peace) is understood as expressing rigorism, while Kant's mundus refers instead to the worldly interests of pseudo-politicians intent on undermining human right. Chapter 1 explicates Hegel's plan to deliver "the idea of right—the concept of right and its actualization" (PhR §1). Chapter 2 discusses the natural cum historical essence of right. Chapter 3 examines "right" as contract, both in its state-foundational role ("Social Contract") and as regulator of interactions in civil society. The strength of this section lies in Kervégan's thorough familiarity with the evolution of Hegel's thought. It is therefore surprising to find Hegel being credited in the end for theorizing a "law below and beyond law," suggesting a Hegelian pedigree of Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss. Part II (chapters 4–6) first presents the role of Rousseau's distinction of bourgeois and citoyen in German Idealism. The underlying theme here is a reinterpretation of Hegel's notion of civil society in a liberal key, or as "anticipation" of future liberal doctrines. This "liberal Rechtsstaat" would even harbor an "antistate orientation." From Hegel's diagnosis of a conflict between modern individuals' "right to particularity" and their claims to universality, Kervégan further sees Hegel as also prefiguring Hayek's work. In the end, since Hegel's bürgerliche Gesellschaft is construed as a realm of relativism, and juridical personhood is understood as anchored in it—rather than in the Rechtsstaat—Kervégan reaches the unlikely conclusion that for Hegel "the rights of man . . . , their scope and value are relative." Part III (chapters 7–9) centers on aspects of "objective spirit" that are of contemporary resonance: Hegel's characterization of modernity (chapter 7); his critical appraisal of democratic representation (chapter 8); his criticism of democracy as such (chapter 9). The first is approached by putting...

Epistemic Institutionalism: Rules and Order, Complexity, and Liberalism

This paper offers an immanent critique of Peter Boettke's recent book, 'F.A. Hayek: : Economics, Political Economy and Social Philosophy'. That is to say, it takes some of the goals Boettke sets out to achieve and suggests how they might have been pursued more effectively. Issues addressed include the nature of epistemic institutionalism, the relationship between rules and social order, the significance of Hayek's work on complexity, and the importance of debates over the nature of liberalism.

Hayek's "Scientism" essay: the social aspects of objectivity and the mind

In his essay "Scientism and the study of society" Hayek argues that attitudes are central to the moral sciences. Since the natural sciences show that "ordinary experience" often does not reproduce the relations between things in the external world, the understanding of attitudes is possible due to the similarity between the mind of the moral scientist and that of the agent. I argue that Hayek’s arguments for the differentiation between the natural sciences and what he calls "ordinary experience" are problematic. I offer an alternative justification by appealing to the manifold goals and social contexts of inquiry. I also elucidate his claim that minds are similar, and how this relates to our understanding of others—both as ordinary agents and as economists. In so doing, I discuss two alternative accounts found in Hayek's work: the first account suggests that understanding is a projection of mental categories from behavioral evidence; the second account—which is found in The sensory order—suggests that understanding is the result of a functional correspondence between structures in the central nervous system.

Hayek's Hidden Critique of The General Theory

Hayek is seen as one of the main opponents of Keynes because of the debate about macroeconomics that they had in the early thirties. A few years after this controversy, Keynes published The General Theory ([1936] 1973), and Hayek was expected to criticize Keynes' new model. But, surprisingly, Hayek decided to remain silent and let his opponent go unchallenged. He regretted it ever after. However, this paper argues that in Hayek's work after 1936, there is a criticism of The General Theory that to a certain extent has remained unnoticed. Thus, this approach reopens the great debate between Hayek and Keynes just where they had apparently left it, that is, after the publication of The General Theory.

Ludwig M. Lachmann Against the Cambridge School

While in the early 1930s Keynes and Hayek were the major figures in a heated academic debate about money and capital, in which Keynes also and especially involved the Italian Piero Sraffa, it might seem at first sight that the Austrian economist set aside an organic demolition of the ideas expressed in 1936 by his rival in the General Theory. Hayek himself, in the future, would regret not having devoted an organic work to criticising the new Keynesian theories. However, as demonstrated in Sanz Bas (2011), although it is not possible to find a debate such as the one on the Treatise on Money, Hayek's subsequent works do include timely and reasoned criticisms as regards the main conclusions of the new Cambridge macroeconomics. But the 'Austrian knight' of a new Vienna-Cambridge debate, in the subsequent decades, was the German economist Ludwig M. Lachmann (1906-1990), a student of Hayek at LSE during the 1930s and later a professor in Johannesburg and New York. Lachmann was one of the protagonists of the Austrian revival after 1974 and the founding leader of the 'nermeneutic stream', opposed by the Rothbardian stream. Lachmann, defending Keynes's subjectivism and expectation theory, revived the Vienna-Cambridge controversy, criticising not Keynes but his followers, in particular the 'new' Cambridge School, developed by Joan Robinson and Piero Sraffa. Lachmann's life sight was to build a new economics paradigm, centred on the idea of market process, expectations and kaleidic society (Shackle); in order to do so he developed a deep attack toward the new Cambridge macroeconomics mainstream, arising from World War II ashes during the 1950s and 1960s. His polemic toward the 'modern' macroeconomics can be read in all his books and papers, but it is particularly evident in Lachmann (1973, [1986a] 1994). His preferred targets were Sraffa and Joan Robinson, 'guilty', according to Lachmann, to overcome Keynes's subjectivism and to develop a new Neo-Ricardian approach. The resulting macroeconomics is accused to be excessively formalist, ignoring the microfoundations that are at the very root of human action and choice. But Lachmann's attack was not only an epistemological one. He intensively tried to demolish all the pillars of the Cambridge macroeconomics: capital as aggregate, long run equilibrium, the absence of innovation and technological change and the conception of rate of profit. His starting point was an economics based on human expectations as the only possible source of human actions. A source, however, never at rest, and continuously influenced by technological change and changing information.

Hayek, Social Theory, and the Contrastive Explanation of Socio-Economic Order

ABSTRACTHayek's later work on the possibility of socio-economic order in decentralized market economies is an exercise in contrastive causal explanation as conceptualized by realist social theorists and philosophers. This interpretation of Hayek's work lends support to the view that Hayek's post-1960 writings can be thought of as an example of comparative institutional analysis. It also provides a means of reinforcing Hayek's own efforts to establish the scientific credentials of his work.

Hayek and the Sorcerer's Apprentice: Whither the Hayekian Logic of Intervention?

AbstractCommentators claim that Hayek's work readily explains what consequences are likely to result from the allegedly socialist policies finding favor with the Obama Administration. They have ready cause to invoke his name as Hayek himself has a penchant for promiscuously invoking “planning” with widespread descriptive applicability. This article draws upon archival material to show that Hayek did indeed think that persisting with middle‐way policies (Hayek's supposed “muddle of the middle”) would lead to full‐blown command planning. In particular, Hayek argued that middle‐way policies would induce psychological changes in the populace that would lead it to supposedly favor and call for ever greater government intervention. For Hayek, these supposed psychological changes allegedly provide much grease for any slippery slope that leads to serfdom.

Scouts versus Stats: the impact of Moneyball on the Major League Baseball draft

Michael Lewis’ influential book Moneyball (2003) discusses several sources of inefficiency in the Major League Baseball (MLB) labour market; one of these being the failure of baseball scouts to place a draft premium on college players. We test this implication of the Moneyball thesis – the superiority of college players – by measuring the productivity of players who were drafted in the first round of five MLB drafts covering the years 1995–1999. Employing a variety of specifications, we find that the performance of college draft choices is no better than those of high school picks and argue that this is consistent with Hayek's (1944) work on the economics of information and his emphasis on the importance of localized knowledge. Additionally, we utilize data on the first three rounds of the MLB draft from 1965 to 2010 to test whether Lewis’ book had any impact on teams’ draft strategies. We find no significant structural change in the draft following the publication of Moneyball.

Dewey and Hayek on Democratic Experimentalism

Michael Dorf and Charles Sabel invoke John Dewey's pragmatist account of thought and as the backdrop for their theory of democratic experimentalism, an approach to governance emphasizing judicially monitored local decision making within a system of decentralized administrative authority. Little credit for influence is given to the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek and his classic liberal ideas. Indeed, Sabel has been highly critical of Hayek's ideas. Yet, an argument can be made that (i) democratic experimentalism is at least loosely Hayekian and (ii) a combined Deweyan-Hayekian analysis of Dorf and Sabel's theory reveals some critical mistakes. Dewey and Hayek's ideas are more compatible than most democratic theorists and political philosophers will admit, allowing the creation and evaluation of democratic experiments within a DeweyanHayekian theoretical framework, as well as extending the framework to other areas of political inquiry....for Dewey, it [democracy] was a method for identifying and correcting through public debate and action the unintended consequences of coordination among private actors. He was concerned to know what democracy, so understood, could leam from the methods of public scrutiny and experimentation by which science discerned and adjusted unworkable ideas about the natural world. -Michael Dorf and Charles Sabel (1998,286)Spontaneous orders are not necessarily complex, but unlike deliberate human arrangements, they may achieve any degree of complexity. One of our main contentions will be that very complex orders, comprising more particular facts than any brain could ascertain or manipulate, can be brought about only through forces inducing the formation of spontaneous orders. - Friedrich Hayek (1973, 38)Michael Dorf and Charles Sabel (1998) invoke John Dewey's pragmatist account of thought and as the backdrop for their theory of democratic experimentalism, an approach to governance emphasizing judicially monitored local decision making within a system of decentralized administrative authority (284).1 Little credit for influence is given to the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek and his classic liberal ideas. Indeed, Sabel has been highly critical of Hayek's ideas. Yet an argument can be made that democratic experimentalism is at least loosely Hayekian. Hayek's notion of a spontaneous order bears some resemblance to what Dorf, Sabel and others call a democratic experiment. Minimizing democratic experimentalism's debt to Hayek may seem unsurprising given the tendency among democratic theorists to bifurcate the forum and the market, preferring deliberation to catallaxy.2 However, Dorf and Sabel gladly embrace the model of flexible economic entrepreneurship in their theory of democratic experimentalism. By preferring Dewey to Hayek, they make two mistakes though. First, they ignore a key lesson of Hayek's epistemology, namely, that implicit knowledge lends invaluable support to the efficacy of decentralized information systems. Second, they underestimate the threat of strategic action to the dialogic process of rule-making. Institutions other than markets can spontaneously evolve once a legal framework is in place, thereafter structuring experimental problem solving and democratic decision making in a Deweyan-Hayekian spirit, that is, by choosing means in the absence of predetermined ends or preferred end-states. One implication of my analysis is that Dewey's and Hayek's ideas are more compatible than most democratic theorists and political philosophers will admit. Evidence of this compatibility opens the door for creating and evaluating democratic experiments within a Deweyan-Hayekian theoretical framework, as well as extending the framework to other areas of political inquiry.The article is organized into five sections. In the next section, I examine the few sympathetic treatments of Hayek's work by liberal political theorists as well as the sparse literature comparing Dewey and Hayek's ideas. …

Hayek on tacit knowledge

Abstract:This paper discusses the place of ‘tacit knowledge’ in Hayek's writings. How did Hayek understand tacit knowledge? How did his understanding change through time? I address these questions and follow the change in Hayek's works from skills and techniques of thought in the 1930s to the use of ‘tacit knowledge’ in the1960s. Hayek uses Polanyi's concept in many writings, but remains short of approving its implications. The paper emphasizes that while Hayek was quite aware of the differences between tacit knowing and knowing-how, he was not keen to stress the divergence. In the end, I offer some potential explanations for this preference.

Currency Competition: A Hayekian Perspective on International Monetary Integration

Currency internationalization is examined from the vantage point of Friedrich Hayek's contributions in the 1970s. Compared with received commentaries in which only an idealized case for private money is attributed to Hayek, this paper underscores other dimensions of Hayek's work on money and currency. Hayek's case for “choice in currency” draws on his theory of competition, anticipates competition between government suppliers of fiat money, accommodates many aspects of international monetary integration, and embodies a distinctive approach to monetary independence, choice of exchange rate regime, and the transnationalization of currency. Hayekian predictions are outlined for future developments in currency competition.

Teorie podnikatelského objevování

The aim of the paper is to introduce Kirzner's theory of entrepreneurial discovery as a complement and an alternative to the mainstream theory. In the first and the second sections, the author explains the main influences of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich August von Hayek's works on entrepreneurial theory. Section three analyzes pure entrepreneurial profit and logical construction of theory as a complement to mainstream theory. To introduce the entrepreneurial market process as an alternative to mainstream theory, the fourth section begins by explaining Kirzner's approach to the critique of the possibilities for economic calculation in the system of public ownership of the means of production and his theory of monopoly. The last section is a conclusion.

Blundering into Wisdom? The Missing Elements of Hayek's Spontaneous Order Liberalism

This paper discusses F. A. Hayek's theory of spontaneous order and cultural evolution. After briefly outlining the main elements of Hayek's approach, we review some of the criticisms addressed to his evolutionary theory. In particular, we discuss a number of paradoxes generated by his view of spontaneous cultural evolution. In our view, these paradoxes result from an insufficiently specified theoretical environment in which cultural and social evolution are taking place. Namely, Hayek does not spend much time discussing the precise nature of political markets that are nonetheless crucial for the persistence and the change of institutional outcomes. Likewise, Hayek places himself outside of his own theory of cultural evolution, for he lacks a model of how ideas and intellectuals affect the choice of one of the multiple evolutionary equilibria. We outline one such model, which uses the notion of sympathy as its main driving mechanism. Taken together, we claim that an explicit analysis of politics and a model of influence of ideas would have helped to resolve some of the key incongruities in Hayek's evolutionary work.

Planning and Know-how: The Relationship between Knowledge and Calculation in Hayek's Case for Markets

Ludwig von Mises' calculation argument against socialism is of fundamental importance to the modern-day case for the market. Yet it is to Hayek that some Austrian-influenced theorists turn when responding to the computational models for non-market price fixing proposed by some socialists. Their reading of Hayek's epistemological argument for markets as distinct from Mises' calculation argument needs to be questioned. Hayek's emphasis upon the dispersal of knowledge across space and time is consistent with Mises' position. In spite of his philosophical critique of rationalist constructivism and his treatment of tacit knowledge, Hayek's case for the market ultimately relies upon the Misean calculation argument. Hayek's work is therefore best understood as a shift in emphasis rather than as a philosophical departure from Mises' position.

‘Comrade Hayek’ or the revival of liberalism? Andrew Gamble's engagement with the work of Friedrich Hayek

One of the most revealing political engagements of recent years was between members of the British left, with the work of the right-wing economist and anti-socialist political theorist, Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992). This paper focuses on the work of Andrew Gamble, and more specifically on his claim that ‘Hayek has much to contribute to the renewal of the socialist project’. Whilst accounts of Hayek's work by the left during much of the post-war period were rare, by the 1990s several historical shifts had led Gamble and others to re-examine their attitudes to their old enemy. Gamble claimed that there were two sides to Hayek: Hayek the ideologue, and Hayek the social scientist, whose work contained lessons of which socialists should take note. Gamble's engagement with Hayek represented a rejection of those statist forms of socialism which had been dominant during the 20th century and his argument, after undergoing this engagement with Hayek's work, bore many similarities to the new liberalism of the early 20th century. As such, Gamble's work can be seen as part of a much wider mutation of those political categories that dominated the 20th century. By the end of that century, in place of statist forms of socialism and conservatism, the debate between left and right was largely carried out within two sides of the liberal tradition.