EVERYTHING IS PROCEEDING AS HAYEK FORETOLD: How the West Accidentally Became Free and Rich — And Why It Might Not Stay That Way.  Joseph Henrich accepts the Manhattan Institute’s $50,000 Hayek Book Prize for 2022 and gives a brief lecture summarizing the book that won the prize, The WEIRDest People in the World.

The lecture, like the book, is a brilliant synthesis of historical analysis and behavioral-science experiments around the world showing how Europeans and Americans became psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous — what Henrich calls WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic). His research, showing the influence of institutions like the Catholic Church and medieval market towns, guilds and universities, illuminates the economist F.A. Hayek’s long-neglected theory for the rise of the West, which Hayek attributed not to the Enlightenment but rather to a long and unplanned process of cultural evolution.  (Full disclosure: I was the chair of the Hayek Prize jury that selected the book.)