Hayek for the 21ST Century

Annotated Bibliography

Prepared by David Gordon

The items included are listed, for the most part, by the date of publication of the first English edition. In my comments on Hayek’s books about monetary theory and the business cycle, I have relied on Joseph T. Salerno’s introduction to Prices and Production and Other Works, Ludwig von Mises Institute 2008.

Prices and Production. New York: Macmillan, 1932. A full statement of Austrian business cycle theory. It stresses how money influences the stages of production.

Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle. London: Jonathan Cape, 1933. Refutes naïve advocates of the quantity theory of money, who assume a fixed relationship between the quantity of money and the price level, neglecting the effects of monetary expansion on the stages of production. Irving Fisher and Gustav Cassel are among the economists criticized.

Monetary Nationalism and International Stability. London: Longmans, Green, 1937. Analyzes the international operation of the pure gold standard. Hayek is very critical of the influence of “monetary nationalism” after World War I. The monetary nationalists favored price stability through monetary policy, with freely fluctuating exchange rates. Hayek opposes these policies.

The Pure Theory of Capital. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941. Discusses capital and intertemporal interest rates. The heterogeneity of capital and its relation to the passage of time is an important theme. This is one of Hayek’s most difficult books.

The Road to Serfdom. London: George Routledge & Sons, 1944. Argues that economic planning leads to the suppression of freedom. A centrally planned economy is inconsistent with the rule of law. “Why the Worst Get on Top” is a famous chapter. This is Hayek’s most popular book.

Individualism and Economic Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948. An essay collection that includes “The Meaning of Competition” and “Free Enterprise and Competitive Order.” These two essays argue that the abstractions of equilibrium analysis should not be a guide to economic policy. Other essays discuss Hayek’s contribution to the debate on the socialist calculation argument. Hayek’s criticism of Oscar Lange’s “competitive solution” is especially noteworthy.

John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor: Their Friendship and Subsequent Marriage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951. A dual biography that traces the stages in the relationship between Mill and Taylor. Hayek contends that Taylor made Mill more of a rigorous rationalist than before he came under her influence, to his detriment.

The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1952. Social planning reflects an engineering mentality, in contrast to the subjectivist method which is proper to the social sciences. The influence of Saint-Simon and his quondam disciple and later rival Comte is stressed. Includes a comparison of Comte and Hegel.

The Sensory Order: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Theoretical Psychology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952. The mind operates through structures of classification, most of which are inaccessible to our consciousness. Strongly critical of behaviorism.

The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. A detailed history of the development of freedom and the rule of law, emphasizing the contributions of English thinkers. Hayek sketches the institutional framework he believes is appropriate for a free society.

Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967. A number of the essays in this collection discuss spontaneous order. The collection includes “The Non Sequitur of the ‘Dependence Effect’,” which criticizes J. K. Galbraith’s charge that business uses advertising to induce artificial demand. “The Intellectuals and Socialism” argues that the “second-hand dealers in ideas” have a propensity to abstract thinking, making them unappreciative of the undirected way in which the free market works,

Law, Legislation and Liberty. Vol. 1, Rules and Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. Stresses the value of a liberal, spontaneous order as opposed to an engineered order. Legislation should be confined to general rules, and the common law, as opposed to legislated law, was a key factor in the development of a free society.

—. Vol. 2, The Mirage of Social Justice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976. Argues that the concept of “social justice” can only arise for a planned economic order. There are no sperate principles of distribution in the free market, and its outcomes are neither “fair” nor “unfair”.

—. Vol. 3, The Political Order of a Free People. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1979. Strongly critical of unrestricted majority-rule democracy, arguing that this is inconsistent with the rule of law. The legislature should be confined to enacting general rules.

New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Includes “Competition as a Discovery Procedure” and Hayek’s Nobel Prize speech, “The Pretence of Knowledge,” arguing that economists cannot properly make predictions about the effects of particular policies based on abstract models, because these models only allow “pattern prediction.”

The Denationalisation of Money: The Argument Refined. London: Institute for Economic Affairs, 1980. Calls for competition among private issuers of currency and suggests that this would lead to convergence on a common standard.

The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism. Vol. 1 of The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. A posthumous publication, edited by W. W. Bartley III. Argues against “constructivist rationalism” and suggests that socialism is a revival of animistic thought. The book is sympathetic to the role of religion and tradition and critical of psychoanalysis for its negative impact on the family.