The Use of Knowledge in Society

[1] Written (along with The Meaning of Competition) as a rebuttal to fellow economist Oskar R. Lange and his endorsement of a planned economy, it was included among the twelve essays in Hayek's 1948 compendium Individualism and Economic Order.

[3] Hayek's article argues against the establishment of a Central Pricing Board (advocated by Lange) by highlighting the dynamic and organic nature of market price-fluctuations, and the benefits of this phenomenon.

[4] He asserts that a centrally planned economy could never match the efficiency of the open market because what is known by a single agent is only a small fraction of the sum total of knowledge held by all members of society.

The article managed to convince market socialists and members of the Cowles Commission (Hayek's intended target) and was positively received by economists Herbert A. Simon, Paul Samuelson, and Robert Solow.

[14] While calling the essay "powerful and luminous," economist George Stigler, in his Nobel Prize Lecture, stated that Hayek failed to address the principles of knowledge acquisition.