Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997)

Isaiah Berlin, a diplomat and political philosopher, developed the idea that there are two kinds of freedom: positive freedom and negative freedom. Positive freedom is characterized by being free to do things. Negative freedom, on the other hand, is characterized by being free from the interference of others, whether other people or the government.

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Jacob Viner

Together with Knight, the Canadian-born Jacob Viner was the leading light of the Chicago School of the inter-war period. His work ranged all over economics, but it is perhaps his work on the history of economic thought and international trade theory that we find his remarkable strengths. Nonetheless, as Robbins characterized him, Jacob Viner

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Jakob Bernoulli

Jakob Bernoulli was born in Switzerland and received his degree in 1671 after studying philosophy and theology at the request of his father and mathematics and astronomy against the will of his father. His motto became Invito patre sidera verso (“Against my father’s will, I study the stars”) as he began to investigate mathematics

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James McGill Buchanan Jr.

James Buchanan is an economist most renowned for his work ‘Public Choice Theory’, and won the 1986 Nobel prize in Economic Science. He has long been a professor at George Mason University. His work in economics included rigorious analysis of the theory of logrolling. Major Works of James M. Buchanan – The Pure Theory

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James Tobin

James Tobin was born on March 5, 1918, in Champaign, Illinois, to a social worker mother and a father who became sports information director for the University of Illinois. Tobin grew into adulthood during the Depression. In a 1981 interview with The New York Times, he cited his experience growing up in that era

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Jean-Baptiste Say

Jean-Baptiste Say was born in Lyons to a family of textile merchants of Huguenot extraction. In 1787, after spending two years in England apprenticed to a merchant, Say took a job at an insurance company in Paris run by Claviere (later to become Minister of Finance). An ardent republican, Say was overjoyed by the

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Joan Robinson

One of the most prominent economists of the century, Joan Robinson incarnated the ‘Cambridge School’ in most of its guises in the 20th century: as a cutting-edge Marshallian before and after 1936; as one of the earliest and most ardent Keynesians and finally as one of the leaders of the Neo-Ricardian and Post Keynesian

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Johann von Thunen

North German landowner from the Mecklenberg area. Although educated at Göttingen, he spent most of his life managing his rural estate, Tellow. In the first volume of his treatise, The Isolated State (1826), he laid down the first serious treatment of spatial economics, connecting with the theory of rent. His second volume (1850) developed

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John Bates Clark

American neo-classical economist and one of the leading figures of the Marginalist Revolution. After graduating from Amherst College in 1875, John Bates Clark traveled to Germany, where he studied under Karl Knies in Heidelberg. Upon his return to the United States, Clark taught economics, history and a whole series of other subjects at Carleton,

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John Dewey

Ideas – Pragmatism emphasizes the pervasive but often-overlooked role of practical activity in inquiry and experience. – The history of philosophy is a misguided quest for certain knowledge of an unchanging reality. – Scientific method, as a method linking the acquisition of knowledge to practical activity, is to be generalized and adopted as the

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John Hicks

One of the most important and influential economists of the twentieth century, the trail of the eternally eclectic John Hicks is found all over economic theory. Although trained at Oxford, his ‘real’ education began when he was appointed to the London School of Economics in the late 1920s, where under the encouragement of Lionel

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John Locke

Ideas – There are no innate ideas. – Human knowledge is derived either from sense experience or from introspection (reflection). – Ideas are signs that represent physical and mental things. – Things ahave primary qualities (solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number) and secondary qualities (all others, including color, sounds, smells, flavors, and

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John Maurice Clark

American economist whose work on trusts brought him world renown and whose ideas anticipated those of John Maynard Keynes. Clark graduated from Amherst College in 1905 and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1910. Major works of John Maurice Clark – Standards and Reasonableness in Local Freight Discriminations, 1910 – Rates for Public Utilities,

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John Maynard Keynes

John Maynard Keynes is doubtlessly one the most important figures in the entire history of economics. He revolutionized economics with his classic book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936). This is generally regarded as probably the most influential social science treatise of the 20th Century, in that it quickly and permanently changed the

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John F. Muth (1930- )

American economist. He formulated the rational expectations theory. Major Works of John Muth – Planning Production, Inventories and Work Force, with C.C. Holt et al, 1960 – Optimal Properties of Exponentially Weighted Forecasts, 1960, JASA – Rational Expectations and the Theory of Price Movements, 1961, Econometrica – Operations Managment: Analysis for decisions with G.K. Groff,

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John Rawls

Modern Harvard philosopher. In his most famous book, Theory of Justice (1971), John Rawls proposed the idea of ‘original position’, a mental exercise whereby a group of rational people must establish a principle of fairness (such as distribution of income) without knowing beforehand where on the resulting pecking order they will end up themselves.

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John Stuart Mill

Ideas – All knowledge is derived originally from sense perception. – Matter, or the external world, can be defined as the permanent possibility of sensation. – Mind is reducible to successive conscious states. – True inference is always accomplished through induction rather than deduction. – Pleasure alone is intrinsically good and pain alone is

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John von Neumann

Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1903. After simultaneously earning a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Budapest and a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Zurich, John von Neumann joined the faculty of the University of Berlin in 1927. He moved to Princeton in 1932 where he became the youngest member of

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Joseph Louis Francois Bertrand

A prominent French mathematician, Joseph Bertrand studied and taught at the École Polytéchnique in Paris. From 1862 to 1900, he held a chair at the prestigious Collège de France. He was also a member of the influential Académie des Sciences. For philosophical reasons, Joseph Bertrand was generally opposed to the application of mathematical reasoning

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Arsene Jules Etienne Dupuit

He was born in Fossano, Italy then under the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte. At the age of ten he emigrated to France with his family where he studied in Versailles – winning a Physics prize at graduation. He then studied in the Ecole Polytechnic as a civil engineer. He gradually took on more responsibility

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