The Manhattan Institute Announces Douglas A. Irwin as the 2019 Hayek Book Prize Winner

New York, NY (April 2, 2019)—The Manhattan Institute has announced that Douglas A. Irwin will be awarded the annual Hayek Book Prize for his book Clashing Over Commerce. Irwin will receive a $50,000 award and will deliver the annual Hayek Lecture on June 6.  

“I’m honored to be awarded this year’s Hayek Prize,” Irwin said. “Having spent more than a decade researching and writing the book, with the goal of educating readers about the importance of trade policy, I am delighted that it has received this recognition from The Manhattan Institute.”

Amity Shlaes, jury Chair, remarked, “Through his magisterial history, Douglas Irwin illuminates the challenges in the field of trade that Hayek first identified. For scholars of international trade federations, Hayek’s preoccupation, Irwin’s will become the go-to work. His book reflects a thoughtful classical liberalism that evokes Hayek. That liberalism is sorely missing in the discourse today.”

“We are pleased to award the Hayek Prize this year to Douglas Irwin,” added Manhattan Institute President Lawrence Mone. “His comprehensive history of US trade policy is a must-read for understanding the trade discussions of today and how our policies have always been shaped by the needs of the era at hand.”

Irwin was one of six finalists announced in February:

• Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities by Alain Bertaud (MIT Press, 2018)
• America's Failing Economy and the Rise of Ronald Reagan ​by Eric R. Crouse (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)
• Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy by George Gilder (Regnery Gateway, 2018)
• Clashing over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy by Douglas A. Irwin (University of Chicago Press, 2017)
• The Tyranny of Metrics by Jerry Z. Muller (Princeton University Press, 2018)
• Judicial Fortitude: The Last Chance to Rein In the Administrative State ​by Peter J. Wallison (Encounter Books, 2018)

Douglas A. Irwin is John French Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. He is the author of Clashing over Commerce: A History of U.S. Trade Policy (University of Chicago Press, 2017), which The Economist and Foreign Affairs selected as one of their Best Books of the Year.

About the Hayek Lecture and Book Prize

Political philosopher and Nobel laureate F. A. Hayek, author of groundbreaking works such as The Road to Serfdom and The Constitution of Liberty, was the key figure in the twentieth century revival of classical liberalism. He was also a formative influence on the Manhattan Institute. When our founder, Sir Antony Fisher, asked how best to reverse the erosion of freedom, Hayek advised him not to begin with politics per se but to fight first on the battlefield of ideas. The Hayek Lecture and Prize affirm and celebrate this mission.