Friedrich A. Hayek

Hayek, Friedrich August von

Friedrich August von Hayek (frē´drĬkh ougŏŏst´ fôn hī´ək), 1899–1992, British economist, b. Vienna. He was raised and educated in Austria and taught at the London School of Economics in the 1930s, where he gained attention for his criticism of Keynes. He expressed his commitment ...

Hayek, Friedrich August von

Friedrich August von Hayek (frē´drĬkh ougŏŏst´ fôn hī´ək), 1899–1992, British economist, b. Vienna. He was raised and educated in Austria and taught at the London School of Economics in the 1930s, where he gained attention for his criticism of Keynes. He expressed his commitment to free markets and his concern about government intervention and aversion to its control of the means of production in The Road to Serfdom (1944). The economic policies of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were significantly influenced by his ideas, and his economic philosophy also helped to foster the global capitalism of the late 20th and early 21st cents. In his later years Hayek wrote works that focused on the fields of philosophy, psychology, and epistemology, including as The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies in the Abuse of Reason (1952). He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1974.

See his collected works, ed. by W. W. Bartley 3d et al. (17 vol., 1989–); N. Wapshott, Keynes Hayek (2011).