| Lionel Robbins |
Article Index for Lionel |
Website Links For Lionel |
Information AboutLionel Robbins |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT LIONEL ROBBINS, BARON ROBBINS | |
| 1898 births | |
| robbins, lionel | |
| 1984 deaths | |
| economists | |
| historians of economic thought | |
| life peers | |
| robbins | |
| academics of the london school of economics | |
|
Lionel Charles Robbins, Baron Robbins ( 1898 - 1984 ) was a British Economist . He is known for his proposed definition of economics, and for his instrumental efforts in shifting Anglo-Saxon economics from its Marshallian direction. THEORIES AND INFLUENCES Robbins is famous for his definition of economics: :"Economics is a science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses." A follower of , Vilfredo Pareto , Eugen Von Böhm-Bawerk , Friedrich Hayek , Friedrich Von Wieser and Knut Wicksell . Robbins succeeded Allyn Young in the chair of the London School Of Economics in 1929. Among his first appointments was Friedrich A. Hayek , who bred a new generation of English-speaking "continentals" such as John Hicks , Nicholas Kaldor , Abba Lerner and Tibor Scitovsky . Frank Knight was an American influence on Robbins. Robbins was initially opposed to Keynes 's General Theory. His 1934 treatise on the Great Depression is an analysis of that period. Robbins saw his London School of Economics as a bulwark against Cambridge, whether it was populated by Marshallians or Keynesians. However, he was eventually to recant and accept the Keynesian Revolution. Although the ascendancy of the London School of Economics is foremost among Robbins' legacies, he is also greatly responsible for the modern British university system - having advocated in the Robbins Report its massive expansion in the 1960s . In the latter part of his life, Robbins turned to the History Of Economic Thought , publishing various classic studies on English doctrinal history. Robbins' L.S.E. lectures, as he gave them in 1980 (more than fifty years after he first taught the subject upon his appointment in 1929), have been published posthumously (see 1998). In 1959 he was created a Life Peer as ''Baron Robbins'', of Clare Market in the City of Westminster . WORKS Robbins' early essays were combative in spirit, stressing the subjectivist theory of value beyond what Anglo-Saxon economics had been used to. He wrote a famous 1932 essay on economic methodology. His work on costs (1930, 1934) brought Wieser's "alternative cost" theorem of supply to England (which was opposed to Marshall's "real cost" theory of supply). His critique of the Marshallian theory of the representative firm (1928), and his critique of the Pigovian Welfare Economics (1932, 1938), influenced the end of the Marshallian empire. In his '' Essay On The Nature And Significance Of Economic Science '', Robbins made his Continental credentials clear. Redefining the scope of economics to be "the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses" (Robbins, 1932). His defense of a priori theory and attack on Marshallian intuitionism is reminiscent of Ludwig Von Mises' essay. LIST OF WORKS
EXTERNAL LINKS |
|
|