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 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
John Stuart Mill
England 1806–1873
The upbringing of John Stuart Mill, born in 1806, was remarkable. Father James must have been convinced that his son was a prodigy; otherwise, the program to which young John Stuart was subjected is almost impossible to comprehend. At the age of six, he began studying Greek; a year later, Latin. Before his twelfth birthday, he had completed a thorough education in mathematics and history. Then it was time for logic, political philosophy, and economics.
At seventeen, he took a job with the East India Company, which left him ample time for the writing of books. And write them he did. His System of Logic (1843), the essay On Liberty (1859), and of course several works on economics, became widely known. No wonder he remained loyal to his employer for thirty-five years. In the meantime, at the age of twenty-five, he managed to fall in love with Harriet Taylor. The love was mutual — but unfortunately, there was also a Mr. Taylor. Not that it made much difference. Allegedly, the two (that is, John Stuart and Harriet) travelled together and lived under the same roof. Only twenty years later did Mr. Taylor pass away, allowing the marriage to be formally concluded. Harriet Taylor influenced Mill above all in matters of women’s emancipation and human rights. His strong liberal views on these issues were, at least in part, owed to his companion/wife.
In 1848, his Principles of Political Economy with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy (to give the full title) appeared — a book written in just six weeks, which must be called a remarkable achievement for a work of such scope. Mill himself regarded it as an eclectic work, a book that did little more than summarize the ideas of others. Then again, the same has been said of nearly every major work in economics, so Mill needn’t have worried.
The Principles became a true textbook — the successor to Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. For decades, it served generations of students well, until it was succeeded in 1890 by Alfred Marshall’s Principles of Economics. Although the book was primarily a brilliant summary — and conclusion — of the ideas of the so-called Classical School in economics, it also contained original contributions of its own. Best known is his distinction between the Laws of Production and the Laws of Distribution. In the Classical School, it was common to conceive of society as governed by strict forces resembling natural laws. Mill went along with those ideas roughly halfway. He believed that production was indeed governed by classically rigid principles such as population growth and diminishing returns (borrowed from Malthus and Ricardo). But income distribution, he argued, depends much more on the mores and habits of a given era — and can therefore be influenced.
During Mill’s lifetime, seven editions of the Principles appeared, and he personally financed a low-cost edition to make it accessible to those of modest means.
In 1865, he was elected to the British Parliament, but lost his seat again in the very next election. He was unable to put his ideas — women’s suffrage, compulsory primary education, land reform — into practice. After a brief tenure as rector of St Andrews University, he withdrew to France. He died in 1873.