Once we acknowledge Friedrich Hayek's pivotal role in getting the Chicago School up and running by the fall of 1946, and then turn our attention to the first meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society in Vevey, Switzerland, in April 1947, we can begin to appreciate the extent to which the dual start-ups of the two landmarks of the history of postwar neoliberal thought were intimately connected. The MPS is generally regarded as the central locus of the development of neoliberal doctrine in the postwar world. Yet we observe that Hayek provided both the intellectual impetus and the organizational spadework for both the Chicago School and the MPS, while the initial funding for the Swiss meeting came from European funds raised from corporate sources by Albert Hunold and from American support provided mainly by the Volker Fund.

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 765