The Pretence of Knowledge
Friedrich von Hayek Nobel Prize Lecture (1974)
Summary: Friedrich von Hayek won the 1974 Nobel Prize in Economics for the work he did on understanding an economy as a vast information network, where information on relative scarcity is transmitted in packets of information we call prices. You can download a PDF file of von Hayek’s Nobel lecture by clicking on the image below or by clicking the following link. Download.
I first met von Hayek in 1976 at the annual meetings of the Mont Pelerin Society held in Hong Kong. I was a 20-something year old economist, terrified about meeting this great man. He had just received the 1974 Nobel Prize (shared with Gunnar Myrdal). He was seated on a small sofa, so I sat next to him just to his left so he could speak more comfortably. He said with a laugh, “You will have to move to the other side. I am deaf to the left you see.” He was a gracious man.
Fun fact: the Economics prize is not actually a Nobel Prize, as you can see in the fine print in the image above. It is an ersatz-Nobel given by the Swedish central bank that was created many years later after heavy lobbying from the Mont Pelerin Society.
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