May 8 marks the 117th anniversary of the birth of Friedrich Hayek, the most renowned member of the so-called Austrian School of economics, who won the Nobel Prize in 1974. Hayek was the “whole package,” as they say, writing the immensely popular book The Road to Serfdom while also writing technical works such as The Pure Theory of Capital. In honor of his birthdate it’s worthwhile to review some of Hayek’s major achievements, which are still relevant today. Perhaps the major theme running throughout Hayek’s career in formal economics concerned knowledge. For example, in a 1945 American Economic Review article titled “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” Hayek wrote that the “economic problem of society” was not merely one of allocating “given” resources, the way a standard textbook might define things. Rather, Hayek argued that the true economic problem is “how to secure the best use of resources known to any of...(Read Full Article)