Adam Smith

Adam Smith was an economist and philosopher who wrote what is considered
the "bible of capitalism," The Wealth of Nations, in which he details the first
system of political economy.
While his exact date of birth isnt known, Adam Smiths baptism was recorded on
June 5, 1723, in Kirkcaldy, Scotland. He attended the Burgh School, where he
studied Latin, mathematics, history and writing. Smith entered the University of
Glasgow when he was 14 and in 1740 went to Oxford.
In 1748, Adam Smith began giving a series of public lectures at the University of
Edinburgh. Through these lectures, in 1750 he met and became lifelong friends
with Scottish philosopher and economist David Hume. This relationship led to
Smith's appointment to the Glasgow University faculty in 1751.
In 1759 Smith published The Theory of Moral Sentiments, a book whose main
contention is that human morality depends on sympathy between the individual
and other members of society. On the heels of the book, he became the tutor of
the future Duke of Buccleuch (17631766) and traveled with him to France,
where Smith met with other eminent thinkers of his day, such as Benjamin
Franklin and French economist Turgot.
After toiling for nine years, in 1776 Smith published An Inquiry into the Nature
and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (usually shortened to The Wealth of
Nations), which is thought of as the first work dedicated to the study of political
economy. Economics of the time were dominated by the idea that a countrys
wealth was best measured by its store of gold and silver. Smith proposed that a
nations wealth should be judged not by this metric but by the total of its
production and commercetoday known as gross national product (GDP). He
also explored theories of the division of labor, an idea dating back to Plato,
through which specialization would lead to a qualitative increase in productivity.
Smiths ideas are a reflection on economics in light of the beginning of the
Industrial Revolution, and he states that free-market economies (i.e., capitalist
ones) are the most productive and beneficial to their societies. He goes on to
argue for an economic system based on individual self-interest led by an
invisible hand, which would achieve the greatest good for all. In time, The
Wealth of Nations won Smith a far-reaching reputation, and the work, considered
a foundational work of classical economics, is one of the most influential books
ever written. In 1787, Smith was named rector of the University of Glasgow, and
he died just three years later, at the age of 67.

Karl marx
Born in Prussia on May 5, 1818, Karl Marx began exploring sociopolitical theories
at university among the Young Hegelians. He became a journalist, and his
socialist writings would get him expelled from Germany and France. In 1848, he
published The Communist Manifesto with Friedrich Engels and was exiled to
London, where he wrote the first volume of Das Kapital and lived the remainder
of his life.
Karl Heinrich Marx was one of nine children born to Heinrich and Henrietta Marx
in Trier, Prussia. His father was a successful lawyer who revered Kant and
Voltaire, and was a passionate activist for Prussian reform. Although both parents
were Jewish with rabbinical ancestry, Karls father converted to Christianity in
1816 at the age of 35.
This was likely a professional concession in response to an 1815 law banning
Jews from high society. He was baptized a Lutheran, rather than a Catholic,
which was the predominant faith in Trier, because he equated Protestantism with
intellectual freedom. When he was 6, Karl was baptized along with the other
children, but his mother waited until 1825, after her father died.
Marx was an average student. He was educated at home until he was 12 and
spent five years, from 1830 to 1835, at the Jesuit high school in Trier, at that time
known as the Friedrich-Wilhelm Gymnasium. The schools principal, a friend of
Marxs father, was a liberal and a Kantian and was respected by the people of
Rhineland but suspect to authorities. The school was under surveillance and was
raided in 1832.
In October of 1835, Marx began studying at the University of Bonn. It had a lively
and rebellious culture, and Marx enthusiastically took part in student life. In his
two semesters there, he was imprisoned for drunkenness and disturbing the
peace, incurred debts and participated in a duel. At the end of the year, Marxs
father insisted he enroll in the more serious University of Berlin.
In Berlin, he studied law and philosophy and was introduced to the philosophy of
G.W.F. Hegel, who had been a professor at Berlin until his death in 1831. Marx
was not initially enamored with Hegel, but he soon became involved with the
Young Hegelians, a radical group of students including Bruno Bauer and Ludwig
Feuerbach, who criticized the political and religious establishments of the day.

David ricardo
Born on 19 April 1772 in London. He was the third son of a Dutch Jew who had
made a fortune on the London Stock Exchange. When he was 14, Ricardo joined
his father's business and showed a good grasp of economic affairs. In 1793 he
married a Quaker called Priscilla Anne Wilkinson; Ricardo then converted to
Christianity, becoming a Unitarian. This caused a breach with his father and
meant that Ricardo had to establish his own business. He continued as a
member of the stock exchange, where his ability won him the support of an
eminent banking house. He did so well that in a few years he acquired a fortune.
This enabled him to pursue his interests in literature and science, particularly in
mathematics, chemistry, and geology.
In 1799 he read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and for the next ten years he
studied economics. His first pamphlet was published in 1810: entitled The High
Price of Bullion, a Proof of the Depreciation of Bank Notes, it was an extension of
the letters that Ricardo had published in the Morning Chronicle in 1809. In it, he
argued in favour of a metallic currency, giving a fresh stimulus to the controversy
about the policy of the Bank of England. The French Wars (1792-1815) caused
Pitt's government to suspend cash payments by the Bank of England in 1797.
Consequently, there had been an increase in the amount of their paper currency
and the volume of lending. This created a climate of inflation. Ricardo said that
inflation affected foreign exchange rates and the flow of gold. The Bullion
Committee was appointed by the House of Commons in 1819: it confirmed
Ricardo's views and recommended the repeal of the Bank Restriction Act.
In 1814, at the age of 42, Ricardo retired from business and took up residence at
Gatcombe Park in Gloucestershire, where he had extensive landholdings. In
1819 he became MP for Portarlington. He did not speak often but his free-trade
views were received with respect, although they opposed the economic thinking
of the day. Parliament was made up of landowners who wished to maintain
the Corn Laws to protect their profits.
Ricardo made friends with a number of eminent men, among whom were the
philosopher and economist James Mill, the Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy
Bentham and Thomas Malthus, best known for his pamphlet, Principles
ofPopulation published in 1798. Ricardo accepted Malthus' ideas on population
growth. In 1815 another controversy arose over the Corn Laws, when the
government passed new legislation that was intended to raise the duties on
imported wheat. In 1815 Ricardo responded to the Corn Laws by publishing
his Essay on the Influence of a Low Price of Corn on the Profits of Stock, in
which he argued that raising the duties on imported grain had the effect of
increasing the price of corn and hence increasing the incomes of landowners and
the aristocracy at the expense of the working classes and the rising industrial
class. He said that the abolition of the Corn Laws would help to distribute the
national income towards the more productive groups in society.
In 1817, Ricardo published Principles of Political Economy and Taxation in which
he analysed the the distribution of money among the landlords, workers, and
owners of capital.

thomas Robert Malthus

Born Feb. 13/14, 1766, Rookery, near Dorking, Surrey, Eng.died Dec. 29,
1834, St. Catherine, near Bath, Somerset, English economist and demographer
who is best known for his theory that population growth will always tend to outrun
the food supply and that betterment of humankind is impossible without stern
limits on reproduction. This thinking is commonly referred to as Malthusianism.
Academic development
Malthus was born into a prosperous family. His father, a friend of the philosopher
and skeptic David Hume, was deeply influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose
book mile (1762) may have been the source of the elder Malthuss liberal ideas
about educating his son. The young Malthus was educated largely at home until
his admission to Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1784.
There he studied a wide range of subjects and took prizes in Latin and Greek,
graduating in 1788. He earned his master of arts degree in 1791, was elected a
fellow of Jesus College in 1793, and took holy orders in 1797.
His unpublished pamphlet The Crisis, written in 1796, supported the newly
proposed Poor Laws, which recommended establishing workhouses for the
impoverished. This view ran somewhat counter to the views on poverty
andpopulation that Malthus published two years later.
In 1804 Malthus married Harriet Eckersall, and in 1805 he became a professor of
history and political economy at the East India Companys college at
Haileybury,Hertfordshire. It was the first time in Great Britain that the
words political economyhad been used to designate an academic office. Malthus
lived quietly at Haileybury for the remainder of his life, except for a visit to Ireland
in 1817 and a trip to the Continent in 1825. In 1811 he met and became close
friends with the economistDavid Ricardo.
In 1819 Malthus was elected a fellow of the Royal Society; in 1821 he joined the
Political Economy Club, whose members included Ricardo and James Mill; and in
1824 he was elected one of the 10 royal associates of the Royal Society of
Literature. In 1833 he was elected to the French Acadmie des Sciences Morales
et Politiques and to the Royal Academy of Berlin. Malthus was one of the
cofounders, in 1834, of the Statistical Society of London.

John maynard keynes

John Maynard Keynes was born on 5 June 1883 in Cambridge, England to a
middle class family. Keynes was the eldest child in a family of three children born
to father John Neville Keynes who was an economist and a lecturer in moral
sciences at the University of Cambridge and mother Florence Ada Keynes who
was a local social reformer. Keynes was given love and attention as a child by his
parents.
Keynes received his primary education at home and in kindergarten. He went to
St Faith's preparatory school as a day pupil from 1892-1897. Keynes was a
brilliant student according to his teachers but had a careless nature and lacked
determination in studies.
Keynes was enrolled in Eton where he got an admission by earning a
scholarship. He showed brilliance in mathematics, classics and history. In 1902
Keynes left Eton to pursue broader studies in King's College, Cambridge where
he had earned a scholarship to pursue mathematics.
Keynes was urged by famous economist Alfred Marshall to become an economist
but Keynes was more interested in philosophy. While studying in Cambridge,
Keynes was influenced by English philosopher George Edward Moores analytic
tradition in philosophy. Keynes also became a active member of the semisecretive Cambridge Apostles society, a debating club which was reserved for
the brightest students of the college. Keynes was a great student and attended
various other activities in college which made him the the President of the
Cambridge University Liberal Club. In May 1904 he received a first class B.A. in
mathematics. Keynes had maintained cordial relations with his alma mater
throughout his life. In 1905 Keynes sat for his Tripos and in 1906 he appeared for
the Civil Service Exams.
Keynes started his career as a civil servant which began in October 1906 when
he joined as a clerk in the India Office. Initially Keynes loved what he was doing
but by 1908 he got bored and resigned from his office. He left for Cambridge to
study and work on probability theory. This mathematical project was initially
started out by funding meted out by Keynes father and the economist Arthur
Pigou. In 1909 Keynes came out with his very first professional economics article
which was published in the Economics Journal. It talked about the plausible
effects the global economic downturn on India could have. In 1909 Keynes was
invited to join Cambridge as a lecturer in economics. This was a course that was
personally funded by Alfred Marshall. Keynes became richer with his growing
earnings as a lecturer and also by giving private tuitions to his students. Keynes
also earned as a research fellow in Cambridge. In 1911 Keynes became the
editor of the Economic Journal. By 1913 Keynes came out with his first
published book, Indian Currency and Finance. It was in this year that Keynes
got noticed and was appointed as a member of the Royal Commission on Indian
Currency and Finance.

William harold hutt

Hutt was born into a working-class, but educated family in London, where his
father was a compositor. After he completed high school during the height of
the First World War, he began training as a pilot, but abandoned his training at the
end of the war.
Hutt attended the London School of Economics (LSE) where he earned a Bachelor
of Commerce degree under the "leading influence" of Edwin Cannan.After his
1924 graduation from LSE, Hutt worked for a publisher until 1927. It was during
this period that Hutt wrote his first published essay, entitled "The Factory System
of the Early Nineteenth Century" (1926).
Rather than wholly removing himself from academia upon the completion of his
undergraduate degree, Hutt remained immersed in the LSE culture, attending
LSE classes informally until March 1928, when he accepted a position as senior
lecturer at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa. In 1930, Hutt was
promoted to "Chair of Commerce" at UCT. Later, Hutt would be named "Dean of
the Faculty of Commerce."
In his writings on collective bargaining, including his first book, The Theory of
Collective Bargaining (1930), Hutt disputed the commonly held position that labor
was at a disadvantage in bargaining with employers, an idea which some had
used to justify organized violence by trade unions. He also argued against the idea
that the labor market consists of a "bilateral monopoly."Although Hutt argued
vehemently against what he considered to be injustices committed by trade
unions, he did not advocate their outright abolition.
According to Australian writer Rafe Champion, Hutt believed that,
[Unions] had (and have) many useful functions in addition to acting as friendly
societies for health and welfare provision. They could help their members to
improve their qualifications and locate the best paid work, and they could provide
assistance to members subjected to unfair treatment by management.
Hutt later became known as a leading voice in the academic community
condemning South African apartheid. He vehemently objected to the policy,
arguing in his 1964 critique,The Economics of the Colour Bar, that it was little
more than a means by which white labor unions used the government to outlaw
black competition.
He was a member of the Mont Pelerin Society and of the Philadelphia Society. Hutt's
work has been notably praised by George Selgin and Nobel laureate James M.
Buchanan.

John stuart mill

Born in 1806, John Stuart Mill was the eldest son of James Mill and Harriet
Barrow (whose influence on Mill was vastly overshadowed by that of his father).
A struggling man of letters, James Mill wrote History of British India(1818), and
the work landed him a coveted position in the East India Company, where he
rose to the post of chief examiner.
When not carrying out his administrative duties, James Mill spent considerable
time educating his son John, who began to learn Greek at age three and Latin at
age eight. By the age of 14, John was extremely well versed in the Greek and
Latin classics; had studied world history, logic and mathematics; and had
mastered the basics of economic theory, all of which was part of his fathers plan
to make John Stuart Mill a young proponent of the views of the philosophical
radicals.
By his late teens, Mill spent many hours editing Jeremy Benthams manuscripts,
and he threw himself into the work of the philosophic radicals (still guided by his
father). He also founded a number of intellectual societies and began to
contribute to periodicals, including the Westminster Review(which was founded
by Bentham and James Mill). In 1823, his father secured him a junior position in
the East India Company, and he, like his father before him, rose in the ranks,
eventually taking his father's position of chief examiner.
Although Mill was influenced by utilitarianism, he nevertheless wrote again and
again in defense of the importance of the rights of individualsnotably in
defense of both suffrage for women and their equal rights in education. (His
essay called The Subjection of Women [1869] is an early, and at the time quite
controversial, defense of gender equality, and because of it he is often
considered a proto-feminist.)
Mills belief that the majority often denies individual liberties drove his interest in
social reform, and he was a strident activist on behalf of political reforms, labor
unions and farm cooperatives.
He has been called "the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the 19th
century and is remembered as one of historys great thinkers in regard to social
and political theory.

Frank fetter
Frank Albert Fetter (/ftr/; 8 March 1863 21 March 1949) was
an American economist of the Austrian School. Fetter's treatise,The Principles of
Economics, contributed to an increased American interest in the Austrian School,
including the theories of Eugen von Bhm-Bawerk, Friedrich von Wieser, Ludwig von
Mises and Friedrich Hayek.
Fetter notably debated Alfred Marshall, presenting a theoretical reassessment of
land as capital. Fetter's arguments have been credited with prompting
mainstream economists to abandon the Georgist idea "that land is a unique factor
of production and hence that there is any special need for a special theory of
ground rent...." A proponent of the subjective theory of value, Fetter emphasized
the importance of time preference and rebuffed Irving Fisher for abandoning the
pure time preference theory of interest that Fisher had earlier espoused in his
1907 book, The Rate of Interest.
Frank Fetter was born in Peru, Indiana to a Quaker family during the height of
the American Civil War. Fetter proved an able student as a youth, as
demonstrated by his acceptance to Indiana University in 1879 when he was only
sixteen years old. At Indiana, he joined the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity. Fetter was on
track to graduate with the class of 1883, but left college to run his family's
bookstore upon news of his father's declining health. Working in the bookstore
offered an opportunity for the young man to acquaint himself with some of the
economic ideas that would later prove formative. Chief among the intellectual
influences Fetter encountered at this time was Henry George's Progress and
Poverty (1879).
After eight years, Fetter returned to academia and finally completed his B.A. in
1891. In 1892, Jeremiah W. Jenkswho had taught Fetter at Indiana University
acquired a teaching position at Cornell University at the new President White School
of History and Political Science and subsequently secured a fellowship for Fetter at
that institution. Fetter completed his Master of Philosophy degree the same year.
Jenks then convinced Fetter to study, as Jenks himself had, under Johannes
Conrad at the Sorbonne in Paris, France. Fetter earned his Ph.D. in 1894 from
the University of Halle in Germany, where he wrote his doctoral dissertation, a
critique of Malthusian population theory.
After earning his doctoral degree, Fetter accepted an instructorship at Cornell,
but quickly left after being offered a position as a professor at Indiana University.
In 1898, Stanford University lured him away from Indiana, but Fetter resigned from
Stanford three years later over a dispute regardingacademic freedom. After leaving
Stanford in 1901, Fetter went back to Cornell, where he remained for ten
years. In 1911, he again found himself in professional transition, accepting the
position of chairman in an interdisciplinary department at Princeton
University which incorporated history,politics, and economics. Fetter was the first
chairman of Princeton University's Department of Economics and Social
institutions.

Joseph schumpeter
Joseph Alois Schumpeter (German: [mpet]; 8 February 1883 8 January
1950) was an Austrian-American economist andpolitical scientist. He briefly served
as Finance Minister of Austria in 1919. In 1932 he became a professor at Harvard
University where he remained until the end of his career. One of the most
influential economists of the 20th century, Schumpeter popularized the term
"creative destruction" in economics.
Schumpeter was born in Te, Habsburg Moravia (now Czech Republic, then part
of Austria-Hungary) in 1883 to Catholic German-speaking parents. His father owned
a factory, but he died when Joseph was only four years old. In 1893, Joseph and
his mother moved to Vienna.
Schumpeter began his career studying law at the University of Vienna under
the Austrian capital theorist Eugen von Bhm-Bawerk, taking his PhD in 1906. In
1909, after some study trips, he became a professor of economics and
government at the University of Czernowitz. In 1911, he joined the University of
Graz, where he remained until World War I.
In 1918, Schumpeter was a member of the Socialization Commission established
by the Council of the People's Deputies in Germany. In March 1919, he was invited
to take office as Minister of Finance in the Republic of German-Austria. He
proposed a capital levy as a way to tackle the war debt and opposed the
socialization of the Alpine Mountain plant. In 1921, he became president of the
private Biedermann Bank. He was also a board a member at the Kaufmann
Bank. Problems at those banks left Schumpeter in debt. His resignation was a
condition of the takeover of the Biedermann Bank in September 1924.
From 1925 to 1932, Schumpeter held a chair at the University of Bonn, Germany.
He lectured at Harvard in 19271928 and 1930. In 1931, he was a visiting
professor at The Tokyo College of Commerce. In 1932, Schumpeter moved to
the United States, and soon began what would become extensive efforts to help
central European economist colleagues displaced by Nazism. Schumpeter also
became known for his opposition to Marxism and socialism that he thought would
lead to dictatorship, and even criticized President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. In
1939, Schumpeter became a US citizen. In the beginning of WWII, the FBI
investigated him and his wife (a prominent scholar of Japanese economics) for
pro-Nazi leanings, but found no evidence of Nazi sympathies.
At Harvard, Schumpeter was considered a memorable character, erudite and
even showy in the classroom. He became known for his heavy teaching load and
his personal and painstaking interest in his students. He served as the faculty
advisor of the Graduate Economics Club and organized private seminars and
discussion groups.Some colleagues thought his views outdated
by Keynesianism which was fashionable; others resented his criticisms,
particularly of their failure to offer an assistant professorship to Paul Samuelson,
but recanted when they thought him likely to accept a position at Yale
University. This period of his life was characterized by hard work and
comparatively little recognition of his massive 2-volume book Business Cycles.

Irving fisher
Irving Fisher (February 27, 1867 April 29, 1947) was
an American economist, statistician, inventor, and Progressive social campaigner. He
was one of the earliest American neoclassical economists, though his later work
on debt deflation has been embraced by the Post-Keynesian school. Joseph
Schumpeter described him as "the greatest economist the United States has ever
produced", an assessment later repeated by James Tobin and Milton Friedman.
Fisher made important contributions to utility theory and general equilibrium. He
was also a pioneer in the rigorous study ofintertemporal choice in markets, which
led him to develop a theory of capital and interest rates. His research on
the quantity theory of money inaugurated the school of macroeconomic thought
known as "monetarism." Fisher was also a pioneer of econometrics, including the
development of index numbers. Some concepts named after him include the Fisher
equation, the Fisher hypothesis, the international Fisher effect, and the Fisher
separation theorem.
Fisher was perhaps the first celebrity economist, but his reputation during his
lifetime was irreparably harmed by his public statements, just prior to the Wall
Street Crash of 1929, claiming that the stock market had reached "a permanently
high plateau". His subsequent theory of debt deflation as an explanation of
the Great Depression, as well as his advocacy of full-reserve banking andalternative
currencies, were largely ignored in favor of the work of John Maynard
Keynes. Fisher's reputation has since recovered in neoclassical economics,
particularly after his work was rediscovered in the late 1950s, and more widely
due to an increased interest in debt deflation after the late-2000s recession.
Fisher was born in Saugerties, New York. His father was a teacher and
a Congregational minister, who raised his son to believe he must be a useful
member of society. Despite being raised in religious family, he later on became
an atheist. As a child, he had remarkable mathematical ability and a flair for
invention. A week after he was admitted to Yale College his father died, at age 53.
Irving then supported his mother, brother, and himself, mainly by tutoring. He
graduated first in his class with a B.A degree in 1888, having also been elected
as a member of the Skull and Bones society.
In 1891, Fisher received the first Ph.D. in economics granted by Yale. His faculty
advisors were the theoretical physicist Willard Gibbs and the sociologist William
Graham Sumner. As a student, Fisher had shown particular talent and inclination
for mathematics, but he found that economics offered greater scope for his
ambition and social concerns. His thesis, published by Yale in 1892
as Mathematical Investigations in the Theory of Value and Prices, was a rigorous
development of the theory of general equilibrium. When he began writing the
thesis, Fisher had not been aware that Lon Walras and his continental European
disciples had already covered similar ground. Nonetheless, Fisher's work was a
very significant contribution and was immediately recognized and praised as firstrate by such European masters as Francis Edgeworth.
After graduating from Yale, Fisher studied in Berlin and Paris.

Henry george

Henry George (September 2, 1839 October 29, 1897) was an American writer,
politician and political economist, who was the most influential proponent of
the land value tax and the value capture of land/natural resource rents, an idea known
at the time as'Single-Tax'. His immensely popular writing is credited with sparking
several reform movements of the Progressive Era and ultimately inspiring the
broad economic philosophy often referred to today as Georgism, the main tenet of
which is that people legitimately own value they fairly create, but that natural
resources and common opportunities, most importantly the value of land, belongs
equally to each person in a community. His most famous work, Progress and
Poverty (1879), sold millions of copies worldwide, probably more than any other
American book before that time. It is a treatise on inequality, the cyclic
nature of industrialized economies, and the use of the land value tax as a remedy.
George was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a lower-middle-class family,
the second of ten children of Richard S. H. George and Catharine Pratt
(Vallance) George. His father was a publisher of religious texts and a devout
Episcopalian, and sent George to the Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia.
George chafed at his religious upbringing and left the academy without
graduating.Instead he convinced his father to hire a tutor and supplemented this
with avid reading and attending lectures at the Franklin institute. His formal
education ended at age 14 and he went to sea as a foremast boy at age 15 in
April 1855 on the Hindoo, bound for Melbourne and Calcutta. He ended up in the
West in 1858 and briefly considered prospecting for gold but instead started work
the same year in San Francisco as a type setter.
In California George fell in love with Annie Corsina Fox, an eighteen-year-old girl
from Sydney who had been orphaned and was living with an uncle. The uncle, a
prosperous, strong-minded man, was opposed to his niece's impoverished suitor.
But the couple, defying him, eloped and married in late 1861, with Henry dressed
in a borrowed suit and Annie bringing only a packet of books. The marriage was
a happy one and four children were born to them. Fox's mother was Irish Catholic,
and while George remained anEvangelical Protestant, the children were
raised Catholic. On November 3, 1862 Annie gave birth to future United States
Representative from New York, Henry George, Jr. (18621916). Early on, even with
the birth of future sculptor, Richard F. George (1865 September 28, 1912), the
family was near starvation.
After deciding against gold mining in British Columbia, George was hired as a
printer for the newly created San Francisco Times, and was able to immediately
submit editorials for publication, including the popular What the Railroads Will Bring
Us., which remained required reading in California schools for decades. George
climbed the ranks of the Times, eventually becoming managing editor in the
summer of 1867. George worked for several papers, including four years (1871
1875) as editor of his own newspaper San Francisco Daily Evening Post and
time running the Reporter, a Democratic anti-monopoly publication. The George
family struggled but George's increasing reputation and involvement in the
newspaper industry lifted them from poverty.

Paul samuelson
Paul Anthony Samuelson was born on May 15, 1915, in Gary, Indiana, to parents

Frank and Ella. After his father, a pharmacist, encountered financial difficulties in
the years following World War I, the family moved to Chicago, Illinois.
Samuelson entered the University of Chicago as a 16-year-old, later claiming that
he was "born as an economist on January 2, 1932," the first day of a college
lecture on 18th century British economist Thomas Malthus. After graduating with
his bachelor's degree in 1935, Samuelson began his graduate studies at Harvard
University, receiving his master's degree in 1936 and Ph.D. in 1941.
Samuelson became engrossed by the discrepancy between economic theories
and real-world applications in the wake of the Great Depression, and sought to
use mathematics to hammer home unifying principles.
Among his achievements were the development of the multiplier-accelerator
model, which captured the inherent tendency of market economies to fluctuate,
and the correspondence principle, which linked the behavior of individuals and
the aggregate stability of an entire economic system.
Samuelson is perhaps most famous for his formation of neoclassical synthesis,
which merged the neoclassic macroeconomic belief in the powers of the free
market with British economist John Maynard Keynes's arguments for government
intervention. Samuelson demonstrated that free-market theories were applicable
during times of economic stability, but government measures, such as tax cuts,
were otherwise needed to overcome inefficiencies and provide stimulation.
Samuelson's first book, Foundations of Economic Analysis, based on his
dissertation, earned him the John Bates Clark Medal by the American Economic
Association in 1947. However, it was his second book, Economics, published in
1948, that became his most famous written work. With its easy-to-digest
explanations of neoclassical synthesis and other theories, it was reprinted in
dozens of languages and became the world's best-selling textbook for nearly 30
years.
From the late 1960s through the early '80s, Paul Samuelson debated economic
viewpoints across from fellow former University of Chicago student Milton
Friedman in Newsweek. During this period, The Collected Scientific Papers of
Paul A. Samuelson was published over the course of five volumes.
Meanwhile, the highly renowned economist continued to influence generations of
students at MIT, helping to reel in an all-star faculty that included Nobel Prize
laureates Robert Solow, Franco Modigliani and Robert Merton.
Among the last generalists to make his mark across the economic spectrum,
Samuelson contributed fundamental insights in consumer theory, welfare
economics, international trade, finance theory, capital theory and
macroeconomics. He died on December 13, 2009, in Belmont, Massachusetts.

Alfred marshall
Alfred Marshall (26 July 1842 13 July 1924) was one of the most influential

economists of his time. His book, Principles of Economics (1890), was the
dominant economic textbook in England for many years. It brings the ideas
of supply and demand,marginal utility, and costs of production into a coherent whole.
He is known as one of the founders of economics.
Marshall was born in Clapham, England, 26 July 1842. His father was a bank
cashier and a devout Evangelical. Marshall grew up in the London suburb
of Clapham and was educated at the Merchant Taylors' School and St John's College,
Cambridge, where he demonstrated an aptitude in mathematics, achieving the
rank of Second Wrangler in the 1865 Cambridge Mathematical Tripos.Marshall
experienced a mental crisis that led him to abandon physics and switch to
philosophy. He began with metaphysics, specifically "the philosophical foundation
of knowledge, especially in relation to theology." Metaphysics led Marshall to
ethics, specifically a Sidgwickian version of utilitarianism; ethics, in turn, led him to
economics, because economics played an essential role in providing the
preconditions for the improvement of the working class. Even as he turned to
economics, his ethical views continued to be a dominant force in his thinking.
He saw that the duty of economics was to improve material conditions, but such
improvement would occur, Marshall believed, only in connection with social and
political forces. His interest in liberalism, socialism, trade unions, women's
education, poverty and progress reflect the influence of his early social
philosophy on his later activities and writings.
Marshall was elected in 1865 to a fellowship at St John's College at Cambridge,
and became lecturer in the moral sciences in 1868. In 1885 he became professor
of political economy at Cambridge, where he remained until his retirement in
1908. Over the years he interacted with many British thinkers including Henry
Sidgwick, W.K. Clifford, Benjamin Jowett, William Stanley Jevons, Francis Ysidro
Edgeworth, John Neville Keynes and John Maynard Keynes. Marshall founded the
"Cambridge School" which paid special attention to increasing returns, the theory
of the firm, and welfare economics; after his retirement leadership passed
to Arthur Cecil Pigou and John Maynard Keynes.
Marshall desired to improve the mathematical rigour of economics and transform
it into a more scientific profession. In the 1870s he wrote a small number of tracts
on international trade and the problems of protectionism. In 1879, many of these
works were compiled into a work entitled The Theory of Foreign Trade: The Pure
Theory of Domestic Values. In the same year (1879) he published The
Economics of Industry with his wife Mary Paley.
Although Marshall took economics to a more mathematically rigorous level, he
did not want mathematics to overshadow economics and thus make economics
irrelevant to the layman.

Ludwig von mises

Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises (German: [lutv fn mizs]; 29 September
1881 10 October 1973) was a philosopher,Austrian School economist, sociologist,

and classical liberal. He became a prominent figure in the Austrian School of

economic thought and is best known for his work on praxeology, a study of human
choice and action. Fearing a Nazi takeover of Switzerland, where he was living at
the time, Mises emigrated to the United States in 1940. Mises' thought has
exerted significant influence on thelibertarian movement in the United States in
the mid-20th century.
Ludwig von Mises was born to Jewish parents in the city of Lemberg,
in Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now L'viv, Ukraine). The family of his father Arthur
Edler von Mises had been elevated to the Austrian nobility in the 19th century,
and was involved in building and financing railroads. Ludwig's mother, Adele
(born Landau), was a niece of Joachim Landau, a Liberal Party deputy to the
Austrian Parliament. Arthur was stationed there as a construction engineer with
Czernowitz railway company. At the age of twelve Ludwig spoke fluent German,
Polish, and French, read Latin, and could understand Ukrainian. Mises was the
older brother of mathematician Richard von Mises, a member of the Vienna Circle.
When Ludwig and Richard were children, his family moved back to Vienna.
In 1900, he attended the University of Vienna,[4] becoming influenced by the
works of Carl Menger. Mises's father died in 1903, and in 1906, Mises was
awarded his doctorate from the school of law.
In 1940 Mises and his wife fled the German advance in Europe and emigrated to
New York City.There he became a visiting professor at New York University. He
held this position from 1945 until his retirement in 1969, though he was not
salaried by the university. Businessman and libertarian commentator Lawrence
Fertig, a member of the NYU Board of Trustees, funded Mises and his work. For
part of this period, Mises studied currency issues for the Pan-Europa movement,
which was led by a fellow NYU faculty member and Austrian exile, Richard
Coudenhove-Kalergi. In 1947, Mises became one of the founding members of
the Mont Pelerin Society. In 1962, von Mises received the Austrian Decoration for
Science and Art for political economy at the Austrian Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Mises retired from teaching at the age of 87. Mises died at the age of 92 in New
York. He is buried at Ferncliff Cemetery, in Hartsdale, New York. Grove City College
houses the 20,000 page archive of Mises papers and unpublished works.
At one time, Mises praised the work of philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand and
Rand's view of Mises was generally favorable; however, the two had a volatile
relationship with strong disagreements, for example over the moral basis of
capitalism.

Friedrich hayek
Friedrich Hayek CH (German: [fid a st hak]; 8 May 1899 23 March
1992), born in Austria-Hungary as Friedrich August von Hayek and frequently

referred to as F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian, later British, economist and

philosopher best known for his defence of classical liberalism. Hayek shared
the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (with Gunnar Myrdal) for his
"pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and ...
penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional
phenomena".
Hayek was a major social theorist and political philosopher of the twentieth
century, and his account of how changing prices communicate information which
enables individuals to co-ordinate their plans is widely regarded as an important
achievement in economics.
Hayek served in World War I and said that his experience in the war and his
desire to help avoid the mistakes that had led to the war led him to his career.
Hayek lived in Austria, Great Britain, the United States and Germany, and
became a British subject in 1938.
He spent most of his academic life at the London School of Economics (LSE),
the University of Chicago, and the University of Freiburg.
In 1984, he was appointed a member of the Order of the Companions of
Honour by Queen Elizabeth II on the advice of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for
his "services to the study of economics". He was the first recipient of the Hanns
Martin Schleyer Prize in 1984. He also received the US Presidential Medal of
Freedom in 1991 from President George H. W. Bush. In 2011, his article "The Use of
Knowledge in Society" was selected as one of the top 20 articles published in The
American Economic Reviewduring its first 100 years.
Hayek was born in Vienna. The son of August von Hayek, a Prussian doctor in the
municipal health service. Hayek's grandfathers were prominent academics
working in the fields of statistics and biology. His paternal line had been raised to
the ranks of the Bohemian nobility for its services to the state. Similarly, a
generation before his maternal forebears had also been raised to the lower noble
rank. However, after 1919 titles of nobility were banned by law in Austria, and the
"von Hayek" family became simply the Hayek family. Hence, after 1919, Hayek's
legal name became "Friedrich Hayek", not "Friedrich von Hayek". Hayek's father
turned his work on regional botany into a highly esteemed botanical treatise,
continuing the family's scholarly traditions.
On his mother's side, Hayek was second cousin to the philosopher Ludwig
Wittgenstein. His mother often played with Wittgenstein's sisters, and had known
Ludwig well. As a result of their family relationship, Hayek became one of the first
to read Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus when the book was
published in its original German edition in 1921.