As a professor at the University of Vienna he had a decisive influence on F. A. Hayek, Fritz Machlup, Gottfried von Haberler, Oskar Morgenstern and other fourth-generation Austrian economists.

He studied at the University of Vienna and was admitted as a very young man to the famous private seminar of Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, which had produced a whole generation of promising economists, such as Otto Bauer, Nicolai Bukharin, Ludwig von Mises, Otto Neurath, and Joseph Schumpeter.

After World War I, Strigl continued his research and wrote an important book on economic theory for which, in 1923, he received his Habilitation – the traditional professors' diploma of the universities of Central Europe.

However, like Mises, Machlup, Haberler, and other Viennese economists of the time, he had to earn his living outside of academia eventually becoming a high official at the Austrian Unemployment Insurance Board.

Due to these personal and intellectual talents, Strigl had a considerable influence on the generation of young economists graduating from the University of Vienna after World War I.

More than any other teacher he shaped the minds of Friedrich Hayek, Gottfried Haberler, Fritz Machlup, Oskar Morgenstern and influenced other future great Viennese economists.

Single-handedly, Strigl made an effective case for economic theory and methodological individualism in this intellectually hostile environment.

Although many other Austrian economists of the time were engaged in similar projects, Strigl's work stands out for its analysis of time-consuming roundabout production processes and their relevance for the Great Depression.

And after the 1939 Anschluß, many others left because Nazi Austria made life unbearable for Jews like Morgenstern and for all non-Jews who could not find or accept any modus vivendi with the National Socialist German Workers Party.