Topic > Lionel Robbins the Economist - 1399

Lord Lionel Robbins was born in 1898 and was one of the many great economists of our time. Robbins was known for his contributions to economic policy, methodology, and the history of ideas, but he made his name as a theorist. Robbins became famous for his definition of economics: "Economics is a science that studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means that have alternative uses." (The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics 2007) Robbins was able to transform Anglo-Saxon economic thought from its Marshallian process to its continental one. In the 1920s, he fought the idea of ​​Alfred Marshall's concept of "representative enterprise". He argued that the concept did not help in understanding the balance of a company or an industry. He also did some of the first work on labor supply, showing that an increase in the wage rate had an ambiguous effect on the quantity of labor supplied. (The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics 2007) He was a follower of William Stanley Jevons and Philip Wicksteed. William Stanley Jevons wrote the book The Theory of Political Economy (1871) which explored the themes of his previous article of 1866 and in the meantime launched the marginalist revolution. (History of Economic Thought WJ 2007) Philip Wicksteed was also a follower of Jevons and a fellow economist who wrote The Common Sense of Political Economy in 1910, which comprehensively presents Wicksteed's economic system. Robbins was also strongly influenced by many other continental European economists. In 1929 he became president of the London School of Economics. During that time, one of his first charges was Friedrich Hayek. Friedrich Hayek was considered a 20th century Renaissance man in the world of economics. Hayek was the best-known proponent of what is now called Austrian economics. (The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics 2007) Robbins' early essays were quite controversial and combative in nature towards Anglo-Saxon economics. He emphasized the ideas of the subjectivist theory of value beyond what Anglo-Saxon economics was accustomed to. Robbins also involved himself in the debate on socialist calculus also called the problem of economic calculus, which in short was a criticism against socialist economics. Robbins sided with Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, who first proposed the idea, against Abba Lerner, Fred Taylor and Oscar Lange. The argument was based on the fact that “without the information provided by market prices it is impossible to rationally allocate resources”. (Hayek, F.