Economists

Adam Smith Scottish moral philosopher whose Wealth of Nations founded classical economics and made the case for free markets and the division of labour. Friedrich Hayek Austrian-British economist and Nobel laureate whose Road to Serfdom and work on dispersed knowledge made the case against central planning. Frédéric Bastiat French economist and legislator whose essays on free trade, legal plunder and the broken window shaped the classical liberal case for limited government. Henry Hazlitt Journalist and economist whose Economics in One Lesson popularised free-market economics for general readers and sold about a million copies. Ludwig von Mises Austrian-American economist who argued that socialism cannot calculate economically without market prices and who set out a deductive science of human action. Milton Friedman Nobel-winning Chicago economist who championed monetarism, school vouchers and free markets, and brought the case for limited government to a mass audience. Thomas Sowell American economist at the Hoover Institution, author of Basic Economics and A Conflict of Visions, known for work on incentives and trade-offs. Walter Williams George Mason University economist and syndicated columnist who argued that economic regulation, more than private discrimination, held back Black Americans. Wilhelm Röpke German economist and social critic, an architect of the ordoliberal social market economy and a conservative critic of mass society and centralisation.