Lionel Robbins
Lionel Charles Robbins, Baron Robbins (
1898 -
1984) was a British
economist of the 20th century who proposed one of the early contemporary definitions of economics, "Economics is a science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses."
Lionel Robbins differed from many English economists of the
1920s: he was not a
Marshallian but rather a follower of
William Stanley Jevons and
Philip Wicksteed. He had also actually read the Continental European economists -
Léon Walras,
Vilfredo Pareto,
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk,
Friedrich von Wieser and
Knut Wicksell. As a result of his Jevonian, Lausanne, Austrian and Swedish influences, Lord Robbins was instrumental in shifting the train of Anglo-Saxon economics off its Marshallian rails and onto Continental ones.
His tools were the
London School of Economics and a famous 1932 essay on economic methodology. Succeeding the unfortunate
Allyn Young to the chair of the L.S.E. in 1929, the thirty-year old Robbins proceeded quickly. 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.
Robbins's early essays were very combative in spirit, stressing the subjectivist theory of value beyond what Anglo-Saxon economics had been used to. His famous work on costs (1930, 1934) helped bring 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), helped put an end to the Marshallian empire -- aided and abetted (and occasionally thwarted) every step of the way by his kindred spirit across the pond,
Frank Knight.
It was his 1932 Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science where Robbins made his Continental credentials clear. Redefining the scope of economics to be "the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between scarce means which have alternative uses" (Robbins, 1932). His defense of a priori theory and attack on Marshallian intuitionism is reminiscent of
von Mises's essay.
Robbins was initially opposed to
Keynes's General Theory. His 1934 treatise on the
Great Depression is an exemplary Neoclassical analysis of that period. Indeed, Robbins always saw his L.S.E. as a bulwark against Cambridge, whether it was populated by Marshallians or Keynesians. However, he was eventually to recant and accept the Keynesian Revolution.
In the latter part of his life, Robbins turned to the history of economic thought, publishing various classic studies on English doctrinal history. Although the ascendancy of the L.S.E. is foremost among his legacies, Robbins is also greatly responsible for the modern British university system - having advocated its massive expansion in the
1960s.
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Biography at LSE website*
Biography at New SchoolThere are photographs of Baron Robbins, economist, administrator and patron of the arts, in the National Portrait Gallery Collection
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Lionel Charles Robbins
