Robert Skidelsky

Friedrich Hayek: a great political thinker rather than a great economist

Volume I of the definitive biography covers the first 50 years, from his birth in Vienna to the publication of his classic, The Road to Serfdom

Friedrich Hayek, c.1940 [Getty Images]
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  • Hayek: A Life, Volume I, 1899-1950

    Bruce Caldwell and Hansjoerg Klausinger

    University of Chicago, pp. 824, £40

Despite being awarded a Nobel in economics in 1974, Friedrich Hayek was a great thinker rather than a great economist. He called himself a ‘muddler’. His own attempt to build an economic theory floundered. His major contribution was to emphasise the limitations  of economic knowledge, and thus the inevitable frustration of efforts to build economic utopias.

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