James M. Buchanan's contributions of 2009-2011 to the post-crisis debate in political economy emphasized the necessity to re-examine the legacy of the “Old Chicago” School. The focus of the current paper is, by following Buchanan's plea, to explore the central topoi in the 1930s debates of...

This paper depicts the co-evolution of the political economies of the "Old Chicago" and Freiburg Schools. These communities within the "laissez-faire within rules" research program and the long-standing "thinking-inorders" tradition emerged in the 1930s and culminated in the 1940s into a...

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...

This paper contextualizes the early political economy of Austrian economist and social philosopher F. A. Hayek in the intellectual milieu of German ordoliberalism. It argues that the particular urgency during the 1930s and 1940s to preserve and stabilize the disintegrating orders of economy and...