Michael Polanyi's vision of economics: Spanning Hayek and Keynes

Agnès Festré (1)

1 GREDEG - Groupe de Recherche en Droit, Economie et Gestion

This paper analyses Michael Polanyi’s vision of economics. We stress two major features: first, the radical opposition to central planning and his defence of self-organization as a superior mechanism for coordinating individual plans that he shared with Hayek; second, the strong support for state interventionism in order to fight unemployment and limit income inequalities that he borrowed from Keynes. Polanyi blended these two apparently contradictory influences and provided an original institutionalist approach, which has unfortunately been underrated in the economics literature. We argue that this approach is consistent with Polanyi’s intellectual background and more specifically, his view on tacit knowledge and his critical approach of liberalism.

Mots clés: Michael Polanyi; Hayek; Keynes; spontaneous order; State intervention; liberalism; tacit knowledge; public liberty B25; B31; B41

Domaines: Economies et finances

Agnès Festré. Michael Polanyi's vision of economics: Spanning Hayek and Keynes. 2020. ⟨halshs-03036824⟩