In a private e-mail to me Greg Ransom asked that I send a

post to the Hayek list discussing the implications of the

recent change in Editors of the Collected Works of F. A.

Hayek (CWH) project. In May Stephen Kresge stepped down and

I took over for him.

Let me first of all echo Lanny's thanks to Stephen for a

job well done. Stephen faced a number of constraints and

difficulties in taking over the editorship after Bill

Bartley died, yet was able to keep the series going and

produced a number of volumes. I worked with him closely on

volumes 9 and 10 and found him to be an excellent person to

work with, an examplar of a general editor. I can only hope

to try to follow his example.

Three immediate tasks lie ahead. The first is to get all of

Stephen's files shipped out to the east coast and to set up

an office here for them. I am working with people at UNCG to

do that. The next is to raise some new financing for the

project. I have been in contact with a few people about the

best ways to approach this but of course would be very happy

to hear from anyone who might have ideas in this area. I

can say that I will be attending the Mt Pelerin meetings in

London in October and am hopeful that that will be

productive. But I also intend to contact some foundations

before then. Finally, I will need to contact the people who

had been working with Stephen as volume editors to see how

they are progressing.

I have some big plans for the CWH. I invite those who have

not seen them to go to the library and look at the

Collected Writings of J.M. Keynes. The series contains 30

volumes, all beautifully produced, the entire project being

lavishly funded by the Royal Economic Society. The project

was undertaken in the early 1970s and completed in the mid

1980s. It consists of 10 volumes of his books, then 20

volumes of short papers, memoranda, correspondence and so

forth. The publication of the last 20 volumes led to an

explosion in scholarship on Keynes in subsequent decades.

I am hoping to produce an additional 10 or so volumes in

the CWH, on top of the twenty originally envisioned by

Bartley. There is plenty of material to fill the additional

volumes. The Hayek Archives now stands at over 110 files.

The first 4 contain biographical material, followed by 55

of general correspondence. Next come 10 files of speeches,

writings, materials pertaining to his academic career, and

subject files. This is followed by 20 files on the Mount

Pelerin Society. The remaining files contain speeches,

writing and correspondence from various sources that were

added to the archives after Hayek's death. This is an

enormous amount of material. To get an idea, each file in

the correspondence section contains anywhere from 30 to 60

folders. The Popper-Hayek correspondence, for which a

volume was originally planned, takes up 2 only folders. And

there is other material outside of the archives, as Lanny

noted, that might also be included.

Another job of the General Editor is to make decisions

concerning quotation from materials contained in the

archives, decisions on rights for publishing or reproducing

published and unpublished materials, and so on. I intend,

at least for now, to continue the general policies of my

predecessor. All requests are handled on a case by case

basis, but in general, quotation of unpublished materials

that will someday be published in volumes of the CWH will

be limited.

I am leaving soon for a one week vacation. When I return,

I will do the final revisions on my own manuscript on

Hayek, _Hayek's Challenge_, before sending it off to my

publisher. (Little plug, there.) After that I will begin

the work ahead on the CWH project. I promise to keep the

list apprised of any major developments, and to provide

occasional progress reports. I appreciate the words of

support I have received from various quarters so far. I

hope to earn them in the future.

Bruce

----------------------

Bruce J. Caldwell

Department of Economics

UNCG

PO Box 26165

Greensboro, N.C. 27402-6165

e-mail bjcaldwe@uncg.edu

phone 336-334-4865

fax 336-334-4089

website: http://www.uncg.edu/bae/people/caldwell