The Walter Eucken Institute is a competence center for basic research into regulatory policy and regulatory economics and is in the tradition of the Freiburg School. It was founded on January 11, 1954, four years after Walter Eucken's death, by some of his friends and students. As an independent institution, the institute conducts economic and social science research in the tradition of the Freiburg Ordoliberal School. The research focuses on the maintenance and further development of a market economy system. The purpose of the institute is to align these studies with the practical implementation of the competition order and to introduce regulatory thinking into the public discussion. With its activities such as lectures,
Walter Eucken died in January 1950, only a few months after the Federal Republic was founded. In the first post-war years he advised the military governments of the Western powers on the economic policy direction of the West German democratic state. The decision in favor of the market economy system demanded by Eucken was at that time controversial both within the major parties and among the population.
Against this background, scientific companions and the Walter Euckens family - first and foremost his wife Edith Eucken-Erdsiek - established a Walter Eucken Institute, in whose statutes the “investigation of problems that are of fundamental importance for the maintenance and further development of a market economy “Was defined as the purpose of the association. Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard, who fought to set the course in the direction of a market economy, decisively supported the establishment process of the institute. Personalities such as Alfred Müller-Armack, Wilhelm Röpke and Alexander Rustow, who still stand for the social market economy system today, were also associated with the institute as founding members or members of the board of trustees.
Right from the start, the institute's work concept had two main pillars: On the one hand, research was carried out on current regulatory issues, mostly as part of long-term contract work and ongoing economic policy advisory contracts for the Federal Ministry of Economics. On the other hand, a discussion forum was created for questions of order theory and order policy. Well-known speakers have always been won for these lectures or scientific conferences, and their contributions have often been published in the institute's own series at Mohr Siebeck Verlag.
Through the systematic connection of the Freiburg SchoolWith the evolutionary order economics of Friedrich A. von Hayeks and the modern constitutional economics of James M. Buchanan, the Walter Eucken Institute shows solutions for current political issues as well as for the sustainable design of the social market economy. (This connection also existed personally: Nobel laureate Friedrich A. von Hayek was a member of the board from 1964 to 1970 and from then until his death in 1992 Honorary President of the institute. From 2003 onwards, James M. Buchanan († 2013), also a Nobel laureate for economics , holds this office.) The modern economic order should not be understood as a purely national solution for Germany, but rather valuable contributions to the new institutional economics in the European and international area, on the economic theory of politics as well as on an empirically founded financial science.
