Thomas Robert Malthus 1766-1834 Thomas Robert Malthus was a English clergyman and author, Ever since Malthus, economics has been referred to as the ‘dismal science,’ The Malthusian argument that gave rise to this unhappy label was propounded in An Essay on the Principle of Population published in 1798. In this, he argues that population unchecked […]

Bernard de Mandeville 1870-1933 Bernard de Mandeville was born in Holland, Mandeville worked in London as a doctor. He is remembered for his satirical poem The Fable of the Bees: or Private Vices, Public Benefits originally published under a different title in 1705. Mandeville points out that private greed and the pursuit of luxury results […]

Alfred Marshall 1842-1924 Alfred Marshall was an English academic economist who became quite influential during his time. After a mathematical training at Cambridge, Marshall turned to economics and, from 1885 to 1908 when he retired, was Professor of Political Ecomomy at his old university. His chief work is the classic Principles of Economics published in […]

Sir John Richard Hicks (1904-1989) Sir John Richard Hicks was an British economist, educated at Balliol, Oxford. He taught at the University of Manchester, the London School of Economics, and at Oxford. His most important book is Value and Capital (1939), in which he investigated the general equilibrium proceeding from the subjective theory of value. […]

Harold Hotelling (1895-1973) Harold Hotelling was an American economist. Professor of Economics at Columbia University, and Professor of Mathematical Statistics at the University of North Carolina. Hotelling established the case for marginal cost-pricing in public utilities in his article The General Welfare in Relation to Problems of Taxation and of Railway and Utility Rates published […]

Harry Gordon Johnson 1923-1977 Harry Gordon Johnson was a Canadian economist and influential academic. Had the unusual distinction of being Professor of Economics at two major universities simultaneously, since from 1966 to 1974 he taught at both the London School of Economics and the University of Chicago. A prolific writer of books and articles. Johnson […]

Leonid Kantorovich (1912-1986) Leonid Kantorovich was an Russian mathematician and economist. As a young professor of mathematics he developed what is now known as linear programming. In 1930 he published Mathematical Methods for the Organization and Planning of Production, the first paper in this field. Kantorovich’s early applications of this theory to such basic economic […]

Nickolai D. Kondratieff (1892 – 1938) Nikolai Dmyitriyevich Kondratieff (1892-1938) was a Russian economist. Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, Kondratieff was an economics professor who was called upon by the new government to create the first Soviet Five-Year-Plan. Kondratieff was thus given the opportunity to draw the economic plan for Russia he assumed upon a […]

Tjalling C. Koopmans (1910-1985) Tjalling C. Koopmans was a Dutch-born economist and econometrician who became a naturalized American in 1946. Koopman studied mathematics and physics at the University of Utrecht before gaining an economics doctorate from Leiden in 1936. In 1940 he went to Princeton University in America as a researcher. During the war, together […]

Sir Roy Forbes Harrod 1900-1978 Sir Roy Forbes Harrod was a British economist, educated at New College, Oxford. Taught at Christ Church, Oxford, from 1922 to 1952. Harrod served under Lord Charwell and in the Prime Minister’s office between 1940 and 1942. Was statistical adviser to the Admiralty between 1942 and 1945. One of his […]