Writing edge
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Posthumous publication honours economist "decades ahead of his time".
The Hand Behind The Invisible Hand
By Karl Mittermaier
(Bristol University Press 2020)
Karl Mittermaier (1938 – 2016) was a member of the Economics Department at Wits University between 1967 and 2001. He was a classical liberal economist and he completed a body of work in 1986 entitled The Hand Behind the Invisible Hand: Dogmatic and Pragmatic Views on Free Markets and the State of Economic Theory. 
When Mittermaier died in 2016, the Head of Economic and Business Science at Wits, Professor Jannie Rossouw, encouraged the idea of publishing the work.
After a painstaking exercise by Mittermaier’s widow, Isabella, assisted by Michael Stettler (BCom 1986, BCom Hon 1987, MCom 1992) and Christopher Torr, the manuscript was revived without any changes to the original and put forward for publication.
It has contributions by Rod O’Donnell and Daniel B Klein and has relevance for ongoing debates in economics, politics, sociology and philosophy.
The work has received favourable reviews from respected academics around the world: Jochen Runde (BCom 1983, BCom Hons 1984, MCom 1987) who is Professor of Economics at Cambridge University, Judge Business School and co-editor of the Cambridge Journal of Economics, writes: “This is a magisterial work of immense erudition that will fascinate anyone interested in debates about free markets and the role of equilibrium theory.”
Nils Goldschmidt, Professor of Contextual Economics and Economic Education at University of Siegen in Germany, writes: “Karl Mittermaier was decades ahead of his time. That he acknowledged the role institutions play in social orders places him in good company among liberal thinkers; that he understood the significance of societal embeddedness in this context makes him a true pioneer.”
Open access to the book is available here.