F. A. Hayek and the Modern Economy Economic Organization and Activity

by Peart, Sandra J. J.; Levy, David M. M.

• ISBN13: 9781137359582
• ISBN10: 1137359587
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-12-11
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

What is the role of human agency in Friedrich Hayek's thought? This volume situates Hayek's writing as it relates to economic organization and activity, particularly to assess what role Hayek assigns to leaders in determining economic progress. Peart and Levy explore the scope for policy makers leading the economy through crisis, how much agency policy makers should assume, and the leadership role that economists should legitimately play in the development and implementation of new economic policy.

Hayek held that economists should take center stage in terms of advocating economic policy but his was a quite different sort of advocacy. He disagreed with some of his contemporaries on what economic policies were best suited to promote economic expansion and stability, seeing economic aggregation as fraught with methodological difficulties and, therefore, that no scientist or policy maker had the wherewithal to direct market transactions. The volume examines the nature of these disagreements along with a number of other themes that characterize Hayek's lifelong work.

Author Biography

Dr. Sandra J. Peart became the fourth dean of the Jepson School of Leadership Studies in 2007. A national leader in her field, Dr. Peart is a former president of the History of Economics Society and co-director of the annual Summer Institute for the History of Economic Thought. Sandra has authored or edited seven books, many with David M. Levy, a professor of economics at George Mason University, including The Street Porter and the Philosopher: Conversations on Egalitarian Economics. She is the author of more than 50 refereed journal articles on ethics and economics, rationality, utilitarianism, race and eugenics, the transition to "modern" economics, and leadership in public goods experiments. Her research has been supported by the NEH and the SSHRCC.

Dr. David Levy's publications include four scholarly books, ninety journal articles, dozens of book reviews and chapters in academic books. The " Vanity of the Philosopher" (2005) , written with Sandra J. Peart, was awarded a Choice Academic Honors. The Economic Ideas of Ordinary People has been republished twenty years after the first publication in 1991. His long association with James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock helped with the Peart-Levy view of analytical egalitarianism as a claim in model space. His service on the American Statistical Association's Professional Ethics Committee helped to develop the Levy-Peart model of sympathetic bias in estimation. In 2012 Levy was made a Distinguished Fellow of the History of Economics Society.

Table of Contents

PART I: FOUNDATIONS
1. Hayek and the Eighteenth Century Science of Human Nature; Peter McNamara
2. Systems of Rules and the Order of Actions: An Essay on Complex Normative Systems; Jerry Gaus
3. Hayek and the Individualists; Sandra Peart and David Levy
PART II: CONTRIBUTIONS TO POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THEORY AND PRACTICE
4. Hayek's The Economic Calculus and the Virginia Lectures; Bruce Caldwell
5. F.A. Hayek and the Early Foundations of Spontaneous Order; Emily Skarbek
6. Hayek and the Nomothetes; Chris Martin
PART III: HAYEK'S LASTING INFLUENCE
7. Hayek's Search for a Monetary Constitution - (Confessions of a Crisis Ridden Economist); Ekkehard Köhler
8. Hayek and the Condition of Freedom; Kenneth Minogue
9. Hayek and the Ordo-Liberal Tradition; Stefan Kolev
10. Canada's Radical Reforms of the 1990s – Hayekian Perspectives; Jason Clemens