Choosing One’s Own Informal Institutions: On Hayek’s Critique of Keynes’s Immoralism

Niclas Berggren ()

No 118, Ratio Working Papers from The Ratio Institute

Abstract: In the main, Hayek favored rules that apply equally to all and located such rules in tradition, beyond conscious construction. This led Hayek to attack Keynes’s immoralism, i.e. the position that one should be free to choose how to lead one’s life irrespective of the informal institutions in place. However, it is argued here that immoralism may be compatible with Hayek’s enterprise since Hayek misinterpreted Keynes, who did not advo-cate the dissolving of all informal rules for everybody. By avoiding this misinterpretation, immoralism can be seen as institutional experimentation at the margin, which Hayek himself favored.

Keywords: Institutions; rules; traditions; morality; liberty; rule of law (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B25 O17 P48 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe, nep-pke and nep-soc
Date: 2008-04-14

Published in Constitutional Political Economy, 2009, pages 139-159.

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Journal Article: Choosing one’s own informal institutions: on Hayek’s critique of Keynes’s immoralism (2009)
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