Hayek, Friedrich August von

Austrian economist and author of Road to Serfdom (1944), an indictment of government intervention in modern economies representing ‘creeping socialism’. He shared the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1974 with Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal, for his analysis of the interdependence of economic, social, and institutional phenomena. Hayek later gained a reputation as a leading critic of Keynesianism and an advocate of free banking as the answer to the scourge of inflation.

Hayek's reputation has gone through a remarkable cycle of fall and rise. An eminent exponent of the Austrian theory of business cycles in the 1930s, he was worsted in the battle over Keynesian economics and retreated into capital theory. He gave up economics altogether after the war and took up psychology, political philosophy, the philosophy of law, and the history of ideas. After receiving the Nobel Prize, his fame as a ‘libertarian’ began to spread.