This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, October 7th, 2004.

I'm Caleb Brown.

50 years ago this week, Frederick Hayek became a Nobel Laureate in economics.

What were the insights that made the way he thought about the human impulse to truck, barter,

and exchange so compelling?

I spoke recently with economists Peter Betke and Bruce Caldwell

about the Hayek Nobel at 50.

When I was in college and to some extent in high school as a young student of economics

it was a little alienating I'll be honest because a lot of the things that we learn in Econ they're very cold.

The models make these sort of enormous leaps from individual experience to curves.

And the curve moves this way, another curve moves another way, and it seems almost

entirely separate from human experience of how we make use of our own knowledge to do things with

respect to opportunities.

And so even in the 90s and in retrospect, it's a little surprising to me that the work of people

like Hayek who were discussing today didn't seem to make its way into that Econ 101 class.

And I'm wondering as we discuss the 50th anniversary of Friedrich Hayek receiving the Nobel Prize in economics or becoming a Nobel Laureate,

you know, how have those ideas influenced, how

people who frankly get not a whole lot of economics in school, how they might be

exposed to the study of economics.

So you're talking about general economic education, right, Caleb?

Yeah, so I had the great fortune yesterday of actually doing a podcast with your

colleague Ryan Bourne on his new book called The War on Prices.

...