How the Intellectual Foundations of Hayekian Economics Relate to Jewish Ideas

The Hoover Institution economist and host of the popular EconTalk podcast Russell Roberts was recently named the next president of Shalem College, a one-of-a-kind liberal-arts college in Jerusalem. In 2018, Roberts joined Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver to explore parallels between ideas found in the Jewish tradition and the economic insights of the great Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek. Hayek’s arguments for intellectual humility, for instance, are congruent with rabbinic claims about the limits of human understanding; moreover, the very way in which halakhah has developed follows Hayek’s idea of “emergent order.” (Audio, 52 minutes.)