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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Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“Life is made too easy. Mankind’s moral fibre is giving way under the softening influence of luxury.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“If the dignity as well as the prestige and influence of the United States are not to be wholly sacrificed, we must protect those who, in foreign ports, display the flag or wear the colors of this Government against insult, brutality, and death, inflicted in resentment of the acts of their Government, and not for any fault of their own.”
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“Just what is the civil law? What neither influence can affect, nor power break, nor money corrupt: were it to be suppressed or even merely ignored or inadequately observed, no one would feel safe about anything, whether his own possessions, the inheritance he expects from his father, or the bequests he makes to his children.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)