Re-stating the Liberal Order: Hayek’s Philosophical Economics

Friedrich August von Hayek was born in Vienna in 1899, the son of a professor of botany at the University. He studied law and political economy at Vienna University, the home of the ‘Austrian School’ of economics which began with Carl Menger and continued under Wieser, Böhm-Bawerk and Mises. From 1927 to 1931 Hayek was director of the Austrian Institute of Economic Research and from 1929 to 1931 was also lecturer in economics at Vienna University. After delivering some lectures on trade cycle theory at the London School of Economics he was invited to become Tooke Professor of Economic Science and Statistics in 1931, a position he held until 1950. In that year he went to the University of Chicago, not as a professor of economics but to a chair in social and moral science. In 1962 he became Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Freiburg, West Germany. On his retirement in 1969 he returned to his native Austria and was a visiting professor at the University of Salzburg. He has recently left Salzburg to return to Freiburg. However, he has retained his British citizenship, which he acquired in 1938.