Ludwig Elder von Mises

Ludwig Elder von Mises, the eminence of the “Austrian School” of economics, may be best known for his part in a debate that raged during the early part of the 20th Century about the possibility of successful economic coordination under socialism. Mises argued forcefully that state ownership of the means of production makes the best assignment

Abba P. Lerner

Abba P. Lerner (1903-1982) was born in Russia, raised on the London East End and worked as a machinist, a capmaker, a Hebrew teacher, a Rabbinical student and tried his hand at business before enrolling in 1929 at the London School of Economics. It was his early association with the plethora of socialist movements prevalent

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Adam Smith (1723-1790)

Ideas – Nature provide a basis in sentiment for virtue. – When we adopt the role of impartial spectators, sympathy is the sentiment that is the basis for moral judgments. – Acting from a sense of duty corrects for any lack of appropriate sentiment in particular instances. – The deity has implanted powerful instincts (passions),

Alfred Marshall (1842-1924)

Alfred Marshall was born in Bermondsey, a London suburb, on 26 July 1842. He died at Balliol Croft, his Cambridge home of many years, on 13 July 1924 at the age of 81. Professor of Political Economy at the University of Cambridge from 1885 to 1908, he was the founder of the Cambridge School of

Alvin Hansen (1887-1975)

Alvin Harvey Hansen (August 23, 1887 – June 6, 1975), often referred to as “the American Keynes”, was a professor of economics at Harvard, a widely read author on current economic issues, and an influential advisor to the government who helped create the Council of Economic Advisors and the Social Security system. He is best

Andre Gunder Frank (1929-2005)

Andre Gunder Frank was born in Berlin on February 24, 1929. He was an economics professor and theorist and one of the founders of the ‘Dependence theory’, developed in the sixties. In his more recent work he focussed his attention on the analysis of the crisis in world economy and then also on global world

Antoine Augustin Cournot (1801-1877)

French philosopher, mathematician and economist, Antoine Augustin Cournot has been rightly hailed as one of the greatest of the Proto-Marginalists. The unique insights of his major economics work, Researches into the Mathematical Principles of Wealth (1838) were without parallel. Although neglected in his time, the impact of Cournot’s work on modern economics can hardly be

Arthur Cecil Pigou (1877-1959)

Arthur Cecil Pigou (/ˈpiːɡuː/; 18 November 1877 – 7 March 1959) was an English economist. As a teacher and builder of the School of Economics at the University of Cambridge, he trained and influenced many Cambridge economists who went on to take chairs of economics around the world. His work covered various fields of economics,

Arthur B. Laffer (1941- )

Arthur Laffer received a B.A. in economics from Yale University in 1963. He received a MBA and a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 1965 and 1971 respectively. Arthur Laffer’s economic acumen and influence in triggering a world-wide tax-cutting movement in the 1980s have earned him the distinction in many publications as ‘The Father

Arthur M. Okun (1928-1980)

Arthur Okun is known mainly for Okun’s Law, which describes a linear relation between percentage changes in unemployment and percent changes in gross national product. It states that for every percentage point that the unemployment rate falls, real GNP rises by 3 percent. Okun’s Law was based on data from World War II to 1960.

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Bertil G. Ohlin (1899-1979)

Bertil Gotthard Ohlin (Swedish: [ˈbæ̌ʈːɪl ʊˈliːn]) (23 April 1899 – 3 August 1979) was a Swedish economist and politician. He was a professor of economics at the Stockholm School of Economics from 1929 to 1965. He was also leader of the People’s Party, a social-liberal party which at the time was the largest party in

Charles Tiebout (1924-1968)

Charles Mills Tiebout (1924–1968) was an economist and geographer most known for his development of the Tiebout model, which suggested that there were actually non-political solutions to the free rider problem in local governance. He earned undisputable recognition in the area of local government and fiscal federalism with his widely cited paper “A pure theory

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Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)

Emile D. Durkheim was born on the evening of April 15, 1858 at Epinal in Lorraine. His mother, Melanie, was a merchant’s daughter and his father was the Rabbi of Epinal and was also Chief Rabbi of the Vosges and Haute-Marne. Emile spent part of his early school years in a rabbinical school destined to

Erving Goffman (1922-1982)

Dr. Erving Goffman received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto in his native Canada in 1945. His master’s and doctorate were granted by the University of Chicago in 1949 and 1953, respectively, where he studied both sociology and social anthropology. While working on his doctorate, he spent a year on one of the

Sir Francis Galton

An English scientist, explorer and anthropologist, Francis Galton was a cousin of Charles Darwin and was one of the first to recognize how Darwin’s theory of evolution was going to clash with theology. He coined the word eugenics to denote scientific endeavors to increase the proportion of persons with better than average genes. This was to be

George Herbert Mead

George Herbert Mead was born in South Hadley, Massachusetts, on February 27, 1863. He was the second child of Hiram Mead (d. 1881), a Congregationalist minister and pastor of the South Hadley Congregational Church, and Elizabeth Storrs Billings (1832-1917). George Herbert’s older sister, Alice, was born in 1859. In 1870, the family moved to Oberlin,

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Sir Francis Galtonir Francis Galton

An English scientist, explorer and anthropologist, Francis Galton was a cousin of Charles Darwin and was one of the first to recognize how Darwin’s theory of evolution was going to clash with theology. He coined the word eugenics to denote scientific endeavors to increase the proportion of persons with better than average genes. This was to be

Herbert Spencer

Ideas – ‘Life under all its forms has arisen by a progressive, unbroken evolution.’ – The law of evolution provides a philosophical generalization capable of scientifically explaining all phenomena. – Evolution is change from an incoherent homogeneity to a coherent heterogeneity. – As organisms increase in size, they increase in structure, and the progressive differentiation

Jurgen Habermas

Jurgen Habermas (born in Düsseldorf, Germany) is a philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory who has integrated into a comprehensive framework of social theory and philosophy the German philosophical thought of Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schelling, Friedrich Hegel, Wilhelm Dilthey, Edmund Husserl, and Hans-Georg Gadamer, the Marxian tradition, both the theory of Karl Marx himself as well as the

Henri Lefebvre

Henri Lefebvre, the most prolific of French Marxist intellectuals, was born in 1901. During his long career, his work has gone in and out of fashion several times, and has influenced the development not only of philosophy but also of sociology, geography, political science and literary criticism. Born in the Landes of South-West France in