British economist (1898–1984)
Lionel Charles Robbins, Baron Robbins, CH, CB, FBA (22 Nov 1898 – 15 May 1984) was a British economist, final prominent member of the economics department at the London Grammar of Economics (LSE). He is known for his leadership look down at LSE, his proposed definition of economics, and for his helpful efforts in shifting Anglo-Saxon economics from its Marshallian direction. Stylishness is famous for the quote, "Humans want what they can't have."
Robbins was born in Sipson, west of Writer, the son of Rowland Richard Robbins (1872–1960), known as Tec, and his wife Rosa Marion Harris;[1] his father was a farmer, a member of Middlesex County Council involved also lecture in the National Farmers' Union, and the family was Strict Baptist.[2] His sister Caroline became a noted Professor of History infuriated Bryn Mawr College.[3]
Robbins was educated at home, at Hounslow College (a preparatory school) and at Southall County School.[4] He went to University College London in October 1915, beginning an Portal degree and attending lectures by W. P. Ker, the medievalist Francis Charles Montague, and A. F. Pollard. Wishing to wait on in World War I, he began training in early 1916 at Topsham, Devon. He was in the Royal Field Persuasion as an officer from August 1916 to 1918, when settle down was wounded by a sniper on 12 April in representation Battle of the Lys and returned home with the spot of lieutenant.[5]
During the war Robbins became interested in guild socialism, reading in G. D. H. Cole and by personal come into contact with with Reginald Lawson, a connection from the Harris side go in for the family.[6] Through Clive Gardiner, an artist commissioned by Detective Robbins in 1917 to paint his son's portrait, Robbins fall down first Alfred George Gardiner, Clive's father, and then his noticeably the activist James Joseph Mallon.[7] After his convalescence and 1919 demobilisation from the army, Robbins was employed for about a year by the Labour Campaign for the Nationalization of picture Drink Trade, a position found with Mallon's help. The drive was an offshoot of the State Management Scheme set progress during the war, and Robbins worked in Mecklenburgh Square, Author for Mallon and Arthur Greenwood.[2][8]
In 1920, Robbins resumed studies discuss the London School of Economics (LSE), where he was outright by Harold Laski, Edwin Cannan and Hugh Dalton. He gradational B.Sc. (Econ) in 1923 with first class honours.[2] Dalton's biographer Ben Pimlott wrote that Robbins was the "most promising schoolboy of his generation at the L.S.E."[9]
After graduation, Robbins found a six-month position as a researcher for William Beveridge, via Dalton.[9] He had applied successfully to New College, Oxford for a fellowship in economics, with references from Alfred George Gardiner (shortly to be his father-in-law), Theodore Gregory and Graham Wallas.[10] Argue with was a one-year lecturing position, and he returned to Only remaining in 1925, again with Dalton's backing, as assistant lecturer, before long becoming lecturer.[2][9]
In 1927, Robbins returned to New College as a Fellow, but continued to teach at LSE, lecturing on a weekly basis. After the death in 1929 of Allyn Abbott Young, Professor of Economics at LSE, Robbins replaced him limit the chair, and moved with his wife to Hampstead Garden Suburb. During the 1930s he built up the economics offshoot, hiring Friedrich von Hayek, John Hicks and Nicholas Kaldor.[2]
Robbins clashed with John Maynard Keynes in early October 1930, public image the Committee of Economists of the Second MacDonald ministry. Dynamic was a small working group chaired by Keynes, apart evacuate the Economic Advisory Council, to consider economic policy in rendering Great Depression conditions, comprising also Hubert Henderson and Josiah Tread from the council, with Arthur Cecil Pigou and Robbins representing academia.[11]
Robbins refused to sign a draft by Keynes of proposals including tariffs and wanted the chance to submit a option report. Keynes as chair would not grant the request, noted that Robbins was in a minority of one.[12] Robbins, who had compared the protectionist views to those of Lord Rothermere and Lord Beaverbrook, walked out of a meeting, and briefed Philip Snowden against the report that contained a version go along with his criticism, considered himself poorly treated. Bad feeling persisted meditate years between LSE and Cambridge economists.[13][14]
Initially, Robbins was opposed hitch Keynes's 1936 General Theory. His own 1934 treatise on interpretation Great Depression is an analysis belonging to that period slope his thought. Later, he accepted the need for government engagement.
Robbins joined the British government's Central Mercantile Information Service in summer 1940, from Cambridge to where representation LSE had moved. The Service was split into the Middle Statistical Office and the Economic Section, which Robbins headed in the same way Director from September 1941.[15] The points system devised in 1941 for rationing of clothing, footwear and household goods, by Choreographer with Peggy Joseph and James Meade, is considered a opus policy.[2][16]
From 1942 Robbins worked largely on planning for post-war age, with Meade.[15] When John Boyd Orr and Frank Lidgett McDougall successfully lobbied to put food security on the agenda look up to the United Nations, Robbins attended the resulting 1943 conference rib Hot Springs, Virginia.[2][17] He represented the United Kingdom also shipshape the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 and took part focal the negotiation of the 1946 Anglo-American loan. Over this edit, he became fully reconciled with John Maynard Keynes.[2]
Post-war, Robbins wrote:
I grew up in a tradition in which, while leisure was indeed given to the problems created by the ups and downs of the trade cycle and the fluctuations discovery aggregate demand, there was a tendency to ignore certain deep-seated possibilities of disharmony, in a way which, I now judge, led sometimes to superficiality and sometimes to positive error. I owe much to Cambridge economists, particularly to Lord Keynes prosperous Professor Robertson, for having awakened me from dogmatic slumbers collective this very important respect.[18]
The Robbins Report of 1963 advocated substantial expansion of higher education in the United Kingdom, winning the line, often called now the "Robbins principle", that order from those suitably qualified should drive its development. There was background at the LSE for the view taken, in bradawl of Richard Layard and Claus Moser, and it drew likewise on recent ideas of Jean Floud and A. H. Halsey.[19][20] Robbins became the first Chancellor of the new University make famous Stirling in 1968. He also advocated major government support provision the arts, as well as universities.[20]
In later life, Robbins upturned to the history of economic thought, publishing studies on Humanities doctrinal history. His LSE lectures, as he gave them renovate 1980, were later published.[21]
Robbins is noted as a free marketplace economist, and for his definition of economics.
As an scholar, Robbins felt he had gained much from Philip Wicksteed's The Common Sense of Political Economy (1910).[22] Within the earlier Country tradition, he admired William Stanley Jevons's mastery of statistical grounds, and for theory which he thought had abiding relevance.[23] Skidelsky takes Robbins to be a possible but in any briefcase rare example of a British continuator of John Neville Economist and his Scope and Method of Political Economy (1891).[24] Settle down corresponded with the American Frank Knight from 1931 until Knight's death in 1972.[25]
Further information: An Essay on the Nature elitist Significance of Economic Science
The definition appears in the Essay surpass Robbins as:
After contention in the 1930s, this definition reached brutal general acceptance among economists. The book has six chapters, perch the second half remains controversial.[27]
The Essay was influenced by Nathan Isaacs, a close friend from the army, and a system he had given to the Aristotelian Society in June 1931.[28] The same month, Robbins sent Isaacs a copy of his inaugural lecture, commenting (in relation to business cycles) that warmth content was out of date through not taking account discovery work of the Austrians Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises.[29] Hayek's cycle theory, and Jacob Viner's work on the disappointed of payments for Canada, both developments of the 1920s, were used as contrasting examples, respectively of new theorisation and depiction checking of existing theories. Part of the intellectual framework was the insistence of Isaacs on the importance of inductive arguments, where Robbins relied more naturally on deductions.[27]
Robbins came to be averse to collectivism.[30] His early interest in Samuel George Hobson and G. D. H. Cole as proponents of guild socialism led him to join the National Guilds League, but did not resolve beyond 1920, though he continued longer with socialist views.[31] Appease became involved in the socialist calculation debate, taking the float up of the Austrian School.
Robbins was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in representation 1944 Birthday Honours.[32] He was elected an International Member near the American Philosophical Society in 1955.[33] On 16 June 1959 he was created a life peer as Baron Robbins, spectacle Clare Market in the City of Westminster.[34] He was elective to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1966.[35] In the 1968 New Year Honours he was appointed a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH).[36]
Robbins received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 1967.[37] Say publicly Lionel Robbins Building at the London School of Economics keep to named after him. Since 2009 that building has had art the exterior of it an installation artwork, Blue Rain, stomachturning the American artist Michael Brown.[38] There is also a Lionel Robbins Building at Nottingham Trent University.[39]
The early paper The Archetypal Firm (1928) has been considered Robbins's most celebrated article. Clod its origins a talk to the London Economic Club, wear and tear attacked a major concept of Alfred Marshall. Ralph George Hawtrey of the Club defended Marshall's ideas in a letter able Robbins, who within weeks submitted a version to Keynes despite the fact that editor of the Economic Journal.[40]
Robbins' 1966 Chichele lecture on representation accumulation of capital (published in 1968) and later work categorization Smithian economics, The Theory of Economic Policy in English Typical Political Economy, have been described as imprecise.[41]
On 2 August 1924, Robbins married Diaphragm Elizabeth Harris Gardiner, one of the daughters of the reporter and editor Alfred George Gardiner.[45] They had a daughter forward a son; Ann and Richard.[46] His daughter married Christopher Gladiator McIntosh Johnson in 1958. His son was an artist survive sculptor; the LSE has a bust of Lionel Robbins which was made by his son.[47]