Arthur Melvin Okun 1928-1980 Arthur Okun was an American economist. Okun taught at Yale University before moving to Washington in 1961. He acted in various capacities to successive administrations, becoming chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers in 1968. His name is associated with the ‘law’ propounded in his 1962 paper, Potential GNP, its […]

Vilfredo F. D. Pareto 1848-1923 Vilfredo F. D. Pareto was an Italian who came to economics after twenty years as an engineer. Pareto’s application of mathematical and statistical techniques to his new subject attracted the attention of Walras, whom he succeeded as Professor of Economics at Lausanne in 1892. In the Cours d’economie Politique (1896). […]

Arthur Cecil Pigou 1877-1959 Arthur Cecil Pigou was an British academic, economist. Pigou was a student under Marshall at Cambridge and succeeded him as Professor of Political Economy in 1890, a post he held until retirement in 1944. The leading classical economist of the two decades before the Second World War, he wrote widely and […]

Alban W. H. Phillips 1914-1975 Alban W. H. Phillips was an New Zealand-born economist. Phillips trained initially as an electrical engineer. The legacy of which is apparent in his economic work. He taught at the London School of Economics from 1950 to 1967, being appointed Professor in 1958. In 1967 he joined the Australian National […]

Paul U. Prebisch 1901-1986 Paul U. Prebisch was an Argentinean economist. Adviser on economics to the Argentine government and secretary-general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). He has argued that the terms of trade shift against primary producers in developing countries and that they should introduce tariffs to protect their infant […]

Franqois Quesnay 1694-1774 Franqois Quesnay was a French economist. Educated as a surgeon in Paris. Court physician to Louis XV in 1752. Quesnay is principally remembered for his book Tableau Economique (1758). The vision and imagination of this work made him by far the most outstanding Physiocrat. In the book, Quesnay divides society into three […]

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederik Engels Translated by Samuel Moore A spectre is haunting Europe- the spectre of Communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police spies. Where is the party in […]

Robert S. McNamara 1916-2009 Robert S. McNamara is a American businessman and public servant. McNamara studied at the universities of Calfornia and Harvard, later becoming Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard from 1948 to 1943. After a distinguished business career, he served as US Secretary of Defence for seven years from 1961. In April […]

James Edward Meade 1907-1995 James Edward Meade was a British economist. Educated at Oxford and Cambridge, Meade served as chief economist at the League of Nations from 1938 to 1940. During and after the war he held high posts in Government service. He has taught at London and Oxford and was Professor of Political Economy […]

Carl Menger 1840-1921 Carl Menger was the founder of the Austrian School and Professor of Economics at Vienna from 1873-1903. Menger’s work was concerned with methodology, monetary theory and the theory of value. It is for the last of these that he is principally famous. One of the first marginal utility theorists, along with Jevons […]