F. A. Hayek as an ordo-liberal

Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992) is undoubtedly one of the most significant liberal thinkers of the past century. Born and raised in Vienna in the tradition of the Austrian School, he held academic positions i.a. in London, Chicago and Freiburg, thus uniting in his vita the four principal centers of neo-liberalism. His intellectual development is of special interest, since he shifts the focus of his research agenda several times, most notably from the field of business cycle research towards the broader field of social philosophy. According to this well-known break in his oeuvre, there is a classical division in secondary literature, splitting him into the two phases: Hayek I (the business cycle theorist) and Hayek II (the social philosopher). The present paper will try to show that this two-fold division is inadequate, or at least incomplete. Instead, a three-fold division seems more appropriate: here, Hayek I would again be the business cycle theorist, but Hayek II is seen as an ordo-liberal philosopher and Hayek III as the evolutionist philosopher. Regarding the time-span of the latter phases, the paper contends that the ordoliberal Hayek is to be seen in the 1930s and 1940s (the time of The Road to Serfdom and the founding of the Mont Pèlerin Society), whereas his evolutionist phase starts in the 1950s and continues to the end of his life. --

The conjoint quest for a liberal positive program: "Old Chicago", Freiburg and Hayek

James M. Buchanan's latest contribution to the post-crisis debate in political economy underpins the necessity to reexamine the legacy of the Old Chicago School of thought, being urged by Buchanan's recently stressed plea at the 2009 Regional Meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society and at the Summer Institute for the Preservation of the History of Economic Thought in 2010. The focus of the current paper is to follow his plea by exploring the central topoi of the 1930's debate of the Chicago School as seen from the work of Henry Simons and discuss its impact on the academic arena on both sides of the Atlantic thereafter. With respect to this impact, we highlight Friedrich A. von Hayek as the focal scholar who possibly transmits these topoi that later influenced the rise of Freiburgean ordoliberalism in Germany from the mid-1930's onwards as youngest archival findings suggest. By revisiting the MPS 1947 first meeting's minutes and papers, we stress the proximity in mind of Old Chicago, Hayek and the Freiburg School ordo-liberals by contributing an explanation for the surprisingly homogenous direction of these yet unconnected schools of thought. n a next, enhanced version of this project, we will subsequently re-discuss the intellectual origins of Constitutional Political Economy's research program. Following Viktor Vanberg, we argue that CPE can be interpreted as a modernized perspective on economics that carries forward three strands of transatlantic liberal programs, being precisely Old Chicago, Freiburg and Hayek. --

Macht und Wissen als Determinanten: Zur Rolle des Staates in der Wirtschaftspolitik bei Walter Eucken und Friedrich August von Hayek

Walter Eucken und Friedrich August von Hayek werden in der Literatur gemeinsam als Initiatoren der Ordnungsökonomik bezeichnet. Das ist darin begründet, dass beide Autoren parallel und weitgehend unabhängig voneinander Forschungsprogramme entwickelt haben, welche sich der Problematik wirtschaftlicher und gesellschaftlicher Ordnungen widmen. Eine wichtige Rolle spielt dabei sowohl bei Eucken als auch bei Hayek der Staat in seiner Funktion beim Aufbau und Erhalt einer solchen Ordnung. Das Staatsverständnis und dabei insbesondere die Rolle des Staates in der Wirtschaftspolitik stehen im Mittelpunkt dieses Beitrages. Es wird dabei ein zweistufiges Verfahren vorgeschlagen. In einem ersten Schritt werden die Ordnungstheorien Euckens und Hayeks erörtert und miteinander verglichen. Dabei deuten sich bereits prinzipielle Parallelen und Unterschiede in der Grenzziehung für den legitimen Bereich des Staates an. Anschließend werden als Anwendungen der ordnungstheoretischen Grundsätze vier Bereiche der Ordnungspolitik nacheinander aufgeführt und die jeweiligen Positionen beider Autoren erläutert. --

Band Gap Modulation of Graphene on SiC

A recipe on how to engineer a band gap in the energy spectrum for the carriers in graphene is conveyed. It is supported by a series of numerical simulations inspired by an analytical result based on the opening of a band gap in periodically corrugated graphene, e.g. the buffer layer grown on SiC at high temperatures.Comment: accepted in EPJ

The Great Depression in the eyes of Bulgaria's inter-war economists

The current paper is an attempt to reconstruct the economic policy debates in Bulgaria around the Great Depression in the 1930s. The goal is twofold. First, it is of interest to track down the development of Bulgarian economic thought in the inter-war period and to analyse its intellectual relationships to the evolution of European (especially German-language) political economy. Secondly, due to some significant analogies between the situation in the surveyed period and the current crisis, it seems possible to tentatively draw conclusions from the economists’ debates then as a contribution to crisis management and post-crisis development of Bulgaria today. The paper is only secondarily interested in the quantitative economic history of the 1930s; instead, the primary objective is to show that history of economic thought as a discipline can give qualitative indications how past theoretical discourse can be inspiring both for conducting economic policy and for avoiding past mistakes

Der bulgarische Weg seit 1989: Wachstum ohne Ordnung?

Mehr als 20 Jahre nach dem Zusammenbruch des Sozialismus im gesamten Mittelost- und Osteuropa ist es Zeit für eine Zwischenbilanz. Es handelt sich um eine stürmische Periode, die als Übergang zwischen den denkbar gegensätzlichen Wirtschafts- und Gesellschaftsordnungen in Ost und West einmaligen Charakter aufweist. Somit ist sicher, dass die Transformationsepoche mit ihren vielfältigen Facetten auf lange Sicht Forschungsgegenstand für verschiedene Sozialwissenschaftler bleiben wird, also etwa für Wirtschaftshistoriker, für Soziologen oder auch für Politikwissenschaftler. Attraktiv wie sie ist, stellt die postsozialistische Transformationszeit für den Forscher auch Schwierigkeiten und Fallen. Die meisten Probleme sind darin begründet, dass die Region, die früher Ostblock genannt wurde, historisch und kulturell ausgesprochen heterogen ist und somit eine ganz besondere Sensitivität erfordert, wenn es um die Analyse der konkreten Transformationsprozesse an einzelnen Orten der Region gehen soll. --Bulgarien,Ordoliberalismus,Transformation

Neoliberale Leitideen zum Staat. Die Rolle des Staates in der Wirtschaftspolitik im Werk von Walter Eucken, Friedrich August von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises und Wilhelm Röpke

--Neoliberalismus,Ordoliberalismus,Ordnungspolitik,Austrian Economics,Österreichische Schule,Freiburger Schule

Introduction to “The social theories of classical political economy and modern economic policy”

This is the first-ever English translation of an 1891 essay by Carl Menger published in the most important newspaper of the Habsburg Empire, the Neue Freie Presse. Menger writes the piece as a defense of classical political economy in general and of Adam Smith in particular, focusing on misinterpretations of Smith’s work by the Younger Historical School in Germany. The essay reveals that Menger saw himself as working in a liberal tradition going back to Smith and classical political economy, rather than as a marginalist revolutionary who broke with classical political economy. It is a rare instance where Menger, holding the chair of economic theory at the University of Vienna, publicly expresses recommendations on economic policy. The essay represents Smith and the other classical political economists as socially motivated scholars concerned with just reforms to benefit ordinary people. Menger argues that the classical political economists were inclined toward liberal reforms but were by no means rigid exponents of laissez-faire. The essay is preceded here by an introduction authored by the translators Erwin Dekker and Stefan Kolev