Was Hayek an austrian economist?
yes and no. was Hayek a praxeologist? no
pp. 70-89
in: Roger Frantz, Robert Leeson (eds), Hayek and behavioral economics, Berlin, Springer, 2013Abstrakt
Before we can even begin to answer the question of whether Hayek was an Austrian economist, we must justify asking it in the first place. For, the reaction to the title of this chapter from some quarters is likely to be, "Who cares?" However, there are several good and sufficient reasons for caring. First of all, Hayek made important contributions to the dismal science.1 Any analysis that delves into his input to economics cannot help be of interest. Second, one of the basic elements of science, including social science, is categorization. It would be too extreme to say that biology and chemistry consist of nothing but classification, but the separation of flora and fauna into genus and species (in the former) and into the periodic table of the elements (in the latter) surely constitute a large part of the study of these two fields. Why should the history of economic thought be any different? Milton Friedman (Ebeling, 2006) has stated that there is only good economics and bad economics; i.e., that there are no distinct schools of thought. But this is a performative contradiction (Hoppe, 1993, 204–207; Kinsella, 2002) if ever there was one, as the statement is belied by the fact that this economist was for many years himself the leader of the Chicago School of Economics. No, Friedman to the contrary notwithstanding, there are schools of thought,2 and if we want to throw more light on the discipline, it behooves us to study it from many, many angles; including, certainly, the one now being undertaken in this chapter.
