The Austrian born economist Friedrich Von Hayek presented some of the most influential theories on markets in the 20th century. As a defender of the free market and of classical liberal principles he believed that we must move away from a state-controlled or “planned” economy and towards a society based upon freedom of association and exchange according to the rule of law. He is credited as being the most prodigious classical liberal scholar of this century and has been described as the central pioneering figure in changing the course of economic thought in the twentieth century