| book details |

Hayek: A Collaborative Biography: Part XV: The Chicago School of Economics, Hayekâ€™s â€˜luckâ€™ and the 1974 Nobel Prize for Economic Science

Edited by Robert Leeson

| on special |

normal price: R 4,266.95

Price: R 3,840.95

| add to trolley |

| book description |

On 9 August 1974, Richard Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment; on 29 April 1975, the United States scuttled from their Embassy in Saigon - optics that were interpreted as defeats for the â€˜International Rightâ€™. Yet in 1975, Margaret Thatcher became leader of the Conservative Party; and in 1976 Ronald Reagan almost unseated a sitting Republican Party President.Â Pivotal to the â€˜turn to the Rightâ€™ was Friedrich â€˜vonâ€™ Hayekâ€™s 1974 Nobel Prize for Economic Science - awarded for having used Austrian Business Cycle Theory to predict the Great Depression: â€˜For him it is not a matter of a simple defence of a liberal system of society as may sometimes appear from the popularized versions of his thinking.â€™ The evidence suggests that Hayekâ€™s fraudulent assertion was uncovered at the University of Chicago in the early 1930s â€“ but not reported. The most likely explanation is self-censorship - for reasons of ideological correctness, fund raising and residual deference to the Second Estate. Four indirect tests suggest that â€˜freeâ€™ market economists have - in other instances and presumably for fund-raising motives - suppressed embarrassing â€˜knowledgeâ€™: which suggests that they were perfectly capable of suppressing â€˜knowledgeâ€™ about Hayekâ€™s non-prediction of the Great Depression. With respect to the Nobel Prize and thus his ability to reach a wider audience, Hayek was fortune in having two loyal â€˜intermediariesâ€™: Lionel Robbins and Fritz Machlup who were â€“ and probably felt themselves to be â€“ â€˜sociallyâ€™ inferior to â€˜vonâ€™ Hayek.