Karl Marx

Ideas – The whole of what is called world history is the creation of human labor. – Capitalist development prevents human beings from reaching their full potential asself-determining beings. – Only when capitalists are overthrown, private property is abolished, and communal ownership of the means of production is established by ab initial dictatorship of

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Kenneth Arrow

One of the most prominent economic theorists of the twentieth century, Kenneth J. Arrow has made fundamental contributions to numerous fields, most of then concentrated around Neo-Walrasian general equlibrium theory and welfare economics, of which he can be considered one of the primary architects. Kenneth Arrow was a thorough New York City product: born and raised

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Knut Wicksell

Knut Wicksell taught at the University of Lund until his retirement in 1916. He was a Swedish economist whose work led to the widespread use of the word “natural” to explain the long-run equilibrium rate of interest. Wicksell had a tremendous influence on economist James M. Buchanan. According to Buchanan, his theory of public choice

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Leonhard Euler

One of the greatest mathematicians of the 18th century, Leonhard Euler was responsible for important advancements in a number of different areas, especially number theory. There are Euler theorems, Euler numbers and Euler formulas in a different fields, each distinct because Euler contributed to so many specialties. In the field of philosophy, Leonhard Euler

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Marie-Esprit Leon Walras

The French economist Leon Walras (pronounced ‘Valrasse’) has been hailed by Joseph Schumpeter as ‘the greatest of all economists’ (Schumpeter, 1954: p.827). Walras was one of the three leaders of the Marginalist Revolution, even though his greatest work, Elements of Pure Economics, was published in 1874, three years after those of William Stanley Jevons and Carl

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Louis Bachelier

The tragic hero of financial economics was the unfortunate Louis Bachelier. In his 1900 dissertation written in Paris, Theorie de la Spéculation (and in his subsequent work, esp. 1906, 1913), he anticipated much of what was to become standard fare in financial theory: random walk of financial market prices, Brownian motion and martingales. His

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Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer

Dutch mathematician and philosopher. He is traditionally referred to as ‘L.E.J. Brouwer’, with full initials, but was called ‘Bertus’ by his friends. In classical mathematics, he founded modern topology by establishing, for example, the topological invariance of dimension and the fixpoint theorem. He also gave the first correct definition of dimension. In philosophy, his

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Maurice Felix Charles Allais

An independent-minded French economist, Maurice Allais strove to carry the message of the original Lausanne School of Leon Walras and Vilfredo Pareto into the modern era, through what we have called the Paretian Revolution of the 1930s. Maurice Allais wrote two major treatises in the 1940s, Á la Recherche d’une discipline économique (1943, reprinted 1952) and Economique et

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Michal Kalecki

In his lifetime, Michal Kalecki was one of the unsung heroes of macroeconomics – and a potent lesson in why, in economics, one should always publish in English. Although Kalecki claimed to have anticipated much of the principles stated in Keynes’s General Theory, his articles (1933, 1935) were published in Polish and French and thus went

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Milton Friedman

One of the most highly influential economists, political commentators and essayists of the century, Milton Friedman is one of the best known economists. An ardent opponent of the Keynesian economics, Friedman led the ‘Monetarist’ incarnation of the Chicago School against the Keynesian orthodoxy in the 1960s and early 1970s. Milton Friedman’s early contributions include

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Mortimer Adler

Mortimer Adler is an American professor, philosopher, and educational theorist. Born in 1902 in New York City, the son of an immigrant jewelry salesman, Adler dropped out of school at age 14 to become a copy boy for the New York Sun. He hoped to become a journalist, and decided a few years later

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Nassau William Senior

The first holder of the Drummond Chair at Oxford, Nassau William Senior was a detractor from orthodox Ricardianism and more in the the ‘Oxford-Dublin’ tradition of supply-and-demand economics. Specifically, Senior can be credited with the initiation in Great Britain of the utility-based demand and the cost of production-based supply scheme, thus an important predecessor

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Nicholas Kaldor

One of the foremost Cambridge economists in the post-war period, Nicholas Kaldor began his professional existence in the Walrasian-Austrian tradition at Robbins’s LSE – during which he made important contributions in the theory of equilibrium (1934), the firm (1934, 1935), capital (1939) and particularly, welfare economics, where he developed the famous ‘compensation’ criteria for

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Paul A. Baran

Paul Alexander Baran was born in 1910 in Russia. He had his academic career in the United States. He was an economist with Marxist views. He died in 1964. Major Works of Paul Baran – The Political Economy of Underdevelopment, 1952, Manchester School – The Political Economy of Growth, 1957 – The Commitment of

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Philip Wicksteed

Philip Wicksteed was an English economist closely associated with the Austrian School. Born in 1844 as the son of a Unitarian clergyman, Wicksteed was educated at University College, London and Manchester New College from 1861 to 1867, when he received his master’s degree, with a gold medal in classics. Following his father into the

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Piero Sraffa

One of the economic giants of the century, Piero Sraffa was at the same time one of the sparest writers of economics – yet each one of his few pieces was tremendous in its turn. Piero Sraffa’s 1926 article on returns to scale and perfect competitions (a revised version of his 1925 Italian paper)

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Raul Prebisch

Argentinian economist at the United Nations Commission for Latin America (UNCLA) and later at UNCTAD, credited with having developed the dependency thesis of economic development theory. Essentially, Raul Prebisch argued that the colonial enterprise and international trade had not been necessarily useful for economic development – as the earlier theorists might imply. Rather, by changing and

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Richard Kahn (1905-1989)

A sparse writer, Richard F. Kahn reknown nonetheless rests on a fundamental idea he formulated at the age of 25 and published in 1931 – which was duly pinched by his master, John Maynard Keynes, and made the centerpiece of the latter’s General Theory (1936): the concept of the multiplier. Richard Kahn, nonetheless, bore his mentor no grudge

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Robert J. Barro

However much theoretical and empirical work Robert J. Barro has done, it is nothing compared with the amount of work he has forced others to undertake in an effort to address his insights. The career of this renowned Harvard New Classical macroeconomist has evolved through several distinct stages. Nonetheless, at each stage, Barro has

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Sir Robert Giffen (1837-1910)

Journalist and statistician who wrote on economic and financial subjects mainly, notably on indicators such as wage rates, economic growth, and national product. Fierce supporter of laissez-faire, pro-free trade and anti-bimetallism. Credited by Alfred Marshall for suggesting the possibility that, in the case of some inferior goods, the income effects are so strong that the law of

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