GERRIT GORTER
The present study of economics did not, of course, come out of thin air. Although thinkers in classical Greece already reflected on what we now call economics, it was largely in the eighteenth century that systematic thought on the subject began.
Two conceptual tools—the economic cycle and the idea of the invisible hand—date from that century and are still in use today, both in academic research and in education.
This site contains twenty-five portraits of important economists. Each offers a biographical sketch together with an indication of his (and, in one case, her) significance for the development of economic thought. They claim no more than to provide a first introduction to the lives and works of these pioneers.
These articles originally appeared in Dutch in the Tijdschrift voor het Economisch Onderwijs and were later published on the website of Gerrit Gorter. The English translations are by Folkert Gorter.
Index
François Quesnay
Adam Smith
Thomas Robert Malthus
Jean-Baptiste Say
David Ricardo
Antoine Augustin Cournot
John Stuart Mill
Karl Marx
Walras
Carl Menger
Alfred Marshall
Vilfredo Pareto Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk
Knut Wicksell
Max Weber
Irving Fisher
Sam de Wolff
John Maynard Keynes
Joseph Alois Schumpeter
Joan Robinson
Jan Tinbergen
John Hicks
John Kenneth Galbraith
Milton Friedman
Paul Samuelson
Joan Robinson
England 1903–1983
Economics has always been a male stronghold. Even today, economics faculties remain predominantly male, and in the history of economic thought, one rarely encounters a woman. The English economist Joan Robinson (née Maurice) can therefore be considered an exception. Had a woman been eligible for the Nobel Prize in Economics, it would have been Robinson.
Robinson was born in 1903 in Surrey, England, into a well-to-do family: father a general, mother the daughter of a professor at the University of Cambridge. At first, she seemed inclined toward the study of history, but later she pivoted to economics, which she went on to study at Cambridge. According to one of her biographers, her choice of economics was driven by an interest in the causes of social problems, such as poverty and unemployment. There have been more economists who took up the subject out of a sense of social engagement. Alfred Marshall — who dominated the field during Robinson’s student years and was one of her teachers — was one of them; and one might also think of our own Jan Tinbergen.
Robinson did important work in the field of imperfect competition. In the leading economics textbook of the early twentieth century — Principles of Economics by Alfred Marshall — only two market structures were distinguished: perfect competition and monopoly. Robinson rightly pointed out that these two market structures were exceptions in economic reality, and that most products were traded in markets falling somewhere in between.
In 1933, her The Economics of Imperfect Competition was published. That same year saw the appearance of a similar book by the American economist Edward Chamberlin. These two books share quite a few similarities. Both deal with the area between perfect competition and monopoly. There’s also a more superficial resemblance: each presents a modern account of microeconomics. Setting aside the French economist Antoine Cournot — who had already written a remarkably modern treatise on economic decision-making back in 1838 — the works of Robinson and Chamberlin were among the first to study economic decision-making using marginal analysis. The presentation was partly graphical — something quite uncommon at the time — so modern readers will have little trouble recognizing the now-familiar diagrams of marginal and average costs and revenues.
Many economists, incidentally, regard Chamberlin as the more important innovator of the two. Robinson didn’t introduce fundamentally new elements; rather, using tools developed by Cournot and Marshall, she refined the existing theory of monopoly. Chamberlin, however, introduced the heterogeneity of goods as a new analytical tool. In doing so, he effectively created the theory of monopolistic competition.
Back to Robinson. As a result of the Great Depression of the 1930s — and the influence Keynes exerted on her in that context — her focus shifted to macroeconomics. She was an active member of the circle around Keynes that worked with him on what would become his most influential book: The General Theory. She made important contributions to the development of post-Keynesian economics. All this culminated in her landmark book The Accumulation of Capital (1956), a work that, more than Keynes’, emphasized long-term developments — such as the influence of different types of technological change on economic growth.
Robinson successfully fought her way into the male-dominated world of economics. Still, it wasn’t until 1965 that she was offered a professorship at Girton College, Cambridge — even though she had already been teaching there since 1937. A notable highlight was when she was appointed president of the American Economic Association in 1974 — the first woman to hold the position. It had taken some time, but Robinson ultimately received the recognition she deserved. She died in 1983.