Influence
Hayek stressed that the society was to be a scholarly community arguing against collectivism, while not engaging in public relations or propaganda. However, the society has always been a focal point for an international think-tank movement; Hayek himself used it as a forum to encourage members such as Antony Fisher to pursue the think-tank route. Fisher went on to establish the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in London during 1955, the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., during 1973, the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research in New York City during 1977 and the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in 1981. In turn the Atlas Foundation supports a wide network of think-tanks, including the Fraser Institute.
Prominent MPS members who advanced to policy positions included the late Chancellor Ludwig Erhard of West Germany, President Luigi Einaudi of Italy, Chairman Arthur F. Burns of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board and U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz. Among the contemporarily prominent personalities, current President Václav Klaus of the Czech Republic as well as acting politicians such as former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe of Sri Lanka, former Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe of the U.K., former Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Defence Antonio Martino, Chilean Finance Minister Carlos Cáceres and former New Zealand Finance Minister Ruth Richardson are to be mentioned as MPS members. Of 76 economic advisers on Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign staff, 22 were MPS members.
Several leading journalists, including Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Walter Lippmann, former radical Max Eastman (then roving editor at Reader’s Digest), John Chamberlain (former editorial writer for Life magazine), Henry Hazlitt (former financial editor of The New York Times and columnist for Newsweek), and Felix Morley (Pulitzer Prize-winning editor at The Washington Post), have also been members.
Eight MPS members, F. A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Maurice Allais, James M. Buchanan, Ronald Coase, Gary S. Becker and Vernon Smith have won Nobel prizes in economics.
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“A healthy soul stands united with the Just and the True, as the magnet arranges itself with the pole, so that he stands to all beholders like a transparent object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the sun, journeys towards that person. He is thus the medium of the highest influence to all who are not on the same level.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)