BY THE 1970s, the shortcomings of the Keynesian economic model forced many to reconsider the theories of the Austrian School. According to Keynesian and other neoclassical views, it was possible for economic actors (read: the government) to have knowledge of the end of economic processes. But the crushing stagflation of that decade and Hayek"s 1974 Nobel Prize brought the Austrian School's theories on the essential uncertainty of economic processes to the forefront. The work of Mises and Hayek – as well as Fritz Machlup's work on "knowledge industries" and "knowledge economics" and Oskar Morgenstern’s on game theory – gained new audiences.

The resurgence of free-market policies paved the way to the prosperity of the Thatcher and Reagan years.