Fred Foldvary asks: Were any economists prior to the 1930s for a pure free market? To me, that is a strange question in that Adam Smith, for instance, was not in favor of a pure free market -- he did not expect it in practice (I can find this cite) and did not advocate it in theory (see Bk. V of Wealth of Nations). I suspect that Fred's "pure free marketers" are primarily a post-WW2 Anglo-American phenomenon (except for a few Lockeans in the late 18th-19th century). Peter G. Stillman