Hayek in the 1930s

Paul Krugman on Hayek’s influence in the 1930s:

…back in the 30s nobody except Hayek would have considered his views a serious rival to those of Keynes…

Alvin Hansen reviewing Hayek’s Prices and Production in 1933 in the American Economic Review.

The present volume is, it seems to me, the only book of recent years which at all approaches Keynes’s A Treatise on Money in the impetus it has given to renewed interest and discussion of business-cycle theory.

This in itself is high praise. Altogether aside from the soundness of its

conclusions, the value of the book and its important place in the recent

literature of cycle theory is unquestioned.

The Nobel Prize committee:

von Hayek’s contributions in the field of economic theory are both profound and original. His scientific books and articles in the twenties and thirties aroused widespread and lively debate. Particularly, his theory of business cycles and his conception of the effects of monetary and credit policies attracted attention and evoked animated discussion. He tried to penetrate more deeply into the business cycle mechanism than was usual at that time. Perhaps, partly due to this more profound analysis, he was one of the few economists who gave warning of the possibility of a major economic crisis before the great crash came in the autumn of 1929.

To be clear, it is true that Keynes’s General Theory eclipsed Hayek but to say that Hayek was not a serious rival to Keynes in the 1930s is a Whiggish misreading of the history of economic thought.

Addendum: Don Boudreaux also comments noting that Hicks specifically referred to the great Hayek-Keynes rivalry of the 1930s. See also Greg Ransom’s citations from Hicks and Coase in the comments.

Do note that reading Hayek out of the debate diminishes Hayek but perhaps even more it diminishes Keynes who clearly won over the profession.