[Today is the fiftieth anniversary of Friedrich A. Hayek’s Nobel Prize Lecture, delivered at the ceremony awarding him the Nobel Prize in economics in Stockholm, Sweden, December 11, 1974. This lecture, along with “A Free-Market Monetary system,” can be found here in book form.]The particular occasion of this lecture, combined with the chief practical problem which economists have to face today, have made the choice of its topic almost inevitable. On the one hand the still recent establishment of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science marks a significant step in the process by which, in the opinion of the general public, economics has been conceded some of the dignity and prestige of the physical sciences. On the other hand, the economists are at this moment

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