2024 marks the 50th anniversary of the Nobel Prize won by liberal political economist F.A. Hayek. This lecture will review the life and times of F.A. Hayek and consider the implications of his ideas for contemporary politics. It will feature Bruce Caldwell, a leading historian of economic thought, author of a recently released book Hayek: A Life, 1899–1950.
The lecture will focus on Hayek’s early life, time at LSE as well as the deeper methodological implications of his academic contributions.
In his famous Nobel speech, Hayek critiqued the prevailing trend of positivism in social science, advocating instead for methodological pluralism. He argued that the complexity of social phenomena cannot be captured through mechanistic models that attempt to predict human action with scientific precision. Caldwell will discuss Hayek's challenge to the scientific community to recognize the limitations of such mechanistic approaches and the importance of embracing a variety of methodologies to broadly appreciate complex economic and social processes. This lecture will offer an exploration of Hayek's enduring influence on the study of complex phenomena and its implications for contemporary social science today.
Meet our speaker and chair
Bruce J. Caldwell is Research Professor of Economics at Duke. His research focuses on the history of economic thought, with a specific interest in the life and works of the Nobel Laureate economist and social theorist F. A. Hayek. He is the author of Hayek's Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F. A. Hayek and since 2002 has served as the general editor of the book series The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek. In 2022 he published Mont Pelerin 1947: Transcripts of the Founding Meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society as well as Hayek: A Life, 1899-1950, the first of a two-volume biography that he is writing with Hansjoerg Klausinger. In 2019-2020 he was a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Mary S. Morgan is Albert O. Hirschman Professor of History and Philosophy of Economics in the Department of Economic History at LSE.
More about this event
This event will be available to watch on LSE Live. LSE Live is the new home for our live streams, allowing you to tune in and join the global debate at LSE, wherever you are in the world. If you can't attend live, a video will be made available shortly afterwards on LSE's YouTube channel.
Modern economic thinking needs to reaffirm and engage with sound Hayekian ideas in this age of global interconnectedness, when the world is coming to grips with multitude of challenges, including global pandemic, climate change, social inequities and inequalities, and politico-media complex. This can only be achieved through fostering dialogue among stakeholders, which include researchers, policymakers, experts, and key decision-makers. The Hayek Programme in Economics and Liberal Political Economy at LSE provides a space where this dialogue can happen. This programme aims to contribute to the research and public debate suited to the demands of 21st Century.
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