Hayek abandoned economic theory for philosophy after Myrdal and Keynesians demolished his monetary work.

Evidence

To telegraph the scene to those not aware of Hayek’s biography, he began his career as an Austrian economist attempting to argue against government attempts to offset business cycles, and continued to do so at the LSE long after the 1929 crash. There he was attacked by the Keynesians in the later 1930s and by Gunnar Myrdal for serious errors in his version of monetary theory. Hayek was deeply disheartened by the chorus of disdain, as well as the failure of his next book The Pure Theory of Capital, and turned away from the genre of “economic theory” altogether in favor of philosophy, publishing his popular book on politics, The Road to Serfdom (1944). At that point he was condemned to the status of being “not an economist,” particularly in the American context; so much so that he was denied a position in the University of Chicago economics department, although he was hired to the Committee on Social Thought in 1950. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 515

Categorization

• DEFINE: Useful biographical context resetting what Hayek was ‘before’ and ‘after’ the Nobel, and distinguishing the economist from the philosopher of politics.
• XREF: connects to: The Nobel committee paired Hayek and Myrdal partly as a joke and backlog-clearing. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 519; The neoliberal thought collective was founded to redeem itself from Depression-era defeat by Keynesians — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 20

Broader Connections

• The Nobel committee paired Hayek and Myrdal partly as a joke and backlog-clearing. #qualifies (0.70) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 519