Nathanaël Colin Colin-Jaeger

Hayek and the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) are often seen as proposing a similar theory of prices. Hayek is seen as proposing to understand prices as information conveyer, incorporating information during the process of competition, while EMH is defined as the fact that all information in a market is integrated into assets prices. This paper explains how a lineage between Hayek and the EMH can be illustrated while taking into account these differences. We introduce in order to defend this claim a distinction between methodological and epistemological differences: methodological differences are seen as the way an author operationalizes his broader conceptions whereas epistemology is defined as the core concepts of his theory. We particularly want to shed light on the homogeneous shift that can be identified in the epistemology of Hayek and the EMH. We conclude that this shift fleshes out the understanding that some authors have of neoliberalism.

Les ordres polycentriques, en particulier des organisations fédérales, octroient une autonomie importante aux différentes juridictions. Plusieurs arguments sont généralement avancés pour défendre leur supériorité sur leurs alternatives monocentriques : un argument épistémique relatif à l’utilisation de la connaissance dispersée dans les sociétés complexes, un argument politique soulignant l’émancipation vis-à-vis d’un pouvoir souverain unifié, un argument démocratique mettant en avant la possibilité d’un auto-gouvernement local accru. Ces arguments fondamentaux rencontrent des limites importantes. Je propose un argument supplémentaire : les ordres polycentriques fédéralistes peuvent être antifragiles, et se renforcer par le biais des expérimentations multiples par diverses juridictions. Cet ordre socio-politique autorise une diversité de réalisations institutionnelles d’idéaux socio-politiques.

Spontaneous orders are an essential concept in political theory and political economy. Such orders entail the impossibility of predicting outcomes in detail and hence controlling and directing social processes. Many phenomena characterizing contemporary societies can be depicted as spontaneous orders, from the housing and financial markets to the evolution of norms and trends. Yet, it is well known that not every spontaneous order is beneficial. Therefore, what form of political framework is compatible with recognizing such orders? In this article, I address this problem through the example of the work of Friedrich Hayek, a prominent liberal theorist of spontaneous orders. His work shows the necessity to theorize a government of spontaneous orders based on maximizing reasonable expectations and individual freedom. I finally emphasize what such a theory implies for political power, which is not abolished but should handle complexity appropriately.

La figure de l’entrepreneur est aujourd’hui utilisée dans une grande variété de discours publics. Ce travail cherche à remonter à l’une des sources théoriques de la constitution de cette figure : la théorie de l’entrepreneur de Schumpeter (1911a et 1911b). Ce retour montre que Schumpeter, dans son contexte intellectuel et théorique, est amené à importer une anthropologie philosophique en économie, celle de Nietzsche, auteur largement lu dans l’Autriche du début du xx e siècle. En transposant, à l’intérieur de sa théorie économique, certaines caractéristiques majeures du grand homme créatif nietzschéen dans la figure de l’entrepreneur, Schumpeter développe une explication originale de la nature dynamique du marché et de l’évolution économique. Néanmoins il importe aussi de Nietzsche une série d’ambiguïtés, notamment en ce qui concerne l’origine de l’exceptionnalité individuelle de l’entrepreneur, et plus particulièrement de sa puissance créatrice. Une seconde ambiguïté est très largement héritée, qui concerne l’extension du modèle de l’individu entrepreneur : constitue-t-il une théorie de l’action valable pour tous les individus ou uniquement pour un type d’individus particuliers? Comment concilier exceptionnalité de l’entrepreneur et norme d’un entreprenariat pour tous? La dernière partie de ce travail s’attache ainsi à explorer ces ambiguïtés, qui apparaissent chez Schumpeter et ses successeurs, notamment Israël Kirzner. Codes JEL : B13, B25, B31, B40.

The 1930s and 1940s marked a period of crisis for liberalism. Authors as diverse as Friedrich Hayek, Wilhelm Röpke, Walter Lippmann, Michael Polanyi and Louis Rougier came together at two seminal events, the Walter Lippmann Colloquium in 1938 and the creation of the Mont-Pèlerin Society in 1947, to rethink liberalism. This rethinking of the liberal project prompted them to carry out a diagnosis of the crisis of liberalism, which, for the authors mentioned, dated back to the French Revolution. This article seeks to demonstrate the coherence of the neoliberal project from their historical diagnosis in this period of crisis. Indeed, by criticising the French Revolution and its effects as part of a harmful rationalism, which gave rise to both a laissez-faire approach and various collectivisms, neoliberals explicitly took up concepts from critics of the revolution, especially Edmund Burke. The concept of tradition, understood as covering social and legal rules that have slowly evolved to constitute coordination mechanisms that allow our actions, is thus very widely taken up and valued by neoliberals. We, therefore, interpret neoliberal theory on the basis of this recategorisation of the concept of tradition, and point out the affinities between neoliberal positions and philosophical conservatism. This alignment reveals several conceptual tensions between cultural evolutionism on the one hand and the defence of significant Western values on the other.