The financial crisis invalidated a naïve notion of “efficient markets,” but the most sophisticated version is still viable. Whereas the invalidated version holds that markets never err and always adjust instantaneously, the sophisticated version, associated with the ideas of Adam Smith and F. A. Hayek, holds that markets mobilize individuals to realize gains from trade and to innovate and thereby produce generalized prosperity.
Peter J. Boettke is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at George Mason University.
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Economic History and DevelopmentEconomyFree Market EconomicsGovernment and PoliticsLaw and LibertyPolitical Theory
Other Independent Review articles by Peter J. Boettke
Fall 2023 Don Lavoie: The Failures of Socialist Central Planning
Winter 2022/23 Mont Pèlerin 1947: Transcripts of the Founding Meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society
Summer 2022 Academic Entrepreneurship in Sometimes Hostile Environments: James Buchanan and the Virginia School of Political Economy
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