Fritz Machlup (/ˈmɑːxluːp/; German: [ˈmaxlʊp]; December 15, 1902 – January 30, 1983) was an Austrian-American economist known for his work in information economics.[1] He was President of the International Economic Association from 1971 to 1974.[2] He was one of the first economists to examine knowledge as an economic resource,[3] and is credited with popularising the concept of the information society.[4]
Fritz Machlup | |
---|---|
Born | |
Died | January 30, 1983 Princeton, New Jersey, U.S. | (aged 80)
Nationality | Austro-Hungarian American |
Education | University of Vienna (Dr. rer. pol 1923) |
Academic career | |
Institution | New York University (1971–83) Princeton University (1960–71) Johns Hopkins University (1947–59) University at Buffalo (1935–47) |
School or tradition | Austrian School |
Doctoral advisor | Ludwig von Mises |
Influences | Friedrich von Wieser Ludwig von Mises Friedrich Hayek |
Contributions | Information society |
Signature | |
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Early life and career
editMachlup was born to Jewish parents in Wiener-Neustadt, then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father was a businessman who owned two factories that manufactured cardboard.[5] In 1920, he began studying economics at the University of Vienna, where he received his dr.rer.pol in 1923.[6] At Vienna, he attended lectures by Friedrich von Wieser, and participated in seminars organised by Ludwig von Mises.[7]
In 1933, he moved to the United States, where he was a research fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation from 1933 to 1935.[6] After the Nazi seizure of Austria in 1938, Machlup remained in the United States, and became a naturalised citizen of the US in 1940.[8] He was the Frank H. Goodyear Professor of Economics at the University at Buffalo from 1935 to 1947,[6] and held visiting positions at various universities around the US, including Harvard, Columbia, and Stanford.[6]
From 1947 to 1960, he was the Abram G. Hutzler Professor of Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University, during which time he served as a research fellow at the Ford Foundation in 1957-58.[6] He was the Walker Professor of Economics and International Finance at Princeton University between 1960 and 1971, where he also directed the International Finance Section.[6] He was a consultant to the Treasury Department from 1965 to 1977.[6] From 1971 till his death in 1983, he was a professor of economics at New York University.[6] His key work was The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States (1962), which is credited with popularizing the concept of the information society.[4]
Machlup was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1961, and the American Philosophical Society in 1963.[9][10] He served as President of the American Economic Association in 1966,[11] and was President of the International Economic Association from 1971 to 1974.[2]
Shortly before his death, he completed the third in a series of ten planned volumes collectively called Knowledge: Its Creation, Distribution, and Economic Significance.[12] Machlup also helped form the Bellagio Group in the early 1960s, and joined its direct successor, the Group of Thirty, in 1979.[5][13]
Major works
edit- Die Goldkernwährung, 1925. (dissertation under Ludwig von Mises)
- "Transfer and Price Effects", 1930, ZfN.
- The Stock Market, Credit and Capital Formation, 1931. (online e-book)
- "The Liquidity of Short-Term Capital", 1932, Economica.
- "A Note on Fixed Costs", 1934, Quarterly Journal of Economics (QJE).
- "Professor Knight and the Period of Production", 1935, Journal of Political Economy (JPE).
- "The Commonsense of the Elasticity of Substitution", 1935, Review of Economic Studies (RES).
- Machlup, Fritz (15 January 1935). "The Consumption of Capital in Austria". The Review of Economics and Statistics. 17 (1): 13–19. doi:10.2307/1928519. JSTOR 1928519.
- "The Rate of Interest as Cost Factor and as a Capitalization Factor", 1935, American Economic Review (AER).
- "Why Bother with Methodology?", 1936, Economica.
- "On the Meaning of Marginal Product", 1937, Explorations in Economics.
- "Monopoly and Competition: A clarification of market positions", 1937, AER.
- "Evaluation of Practical Significance of the Theory of Monopolistic Competition", 1939, AER.
- "Period Analysis and Multiplier Theory", 1939, QJE.
- "The Theory of Foreign Exchange", 1939–40, Economica.
- "Eight Questions on Gold", 1941, AER.
- "Forced or Induced Savings: An exploration into its synonyms and homonyms", 1943, Review of Economics and Statistics (REStat).
- International Trade and the National Income Multiplier, 1943. (online e-book)
- "Marginal Analysis and Empirical Research", 1946, AER.
- "A Rejoinder to an Anti-Marginalist", 1947, AER.
- "Monopolistic Wage Determination as a Part of the General Problem of Monopoly", 1947, in Wage Determination and the Economics of Liberalism.
- "Elasticity Pessimism in International Trade", 1950, Economia Internazionale.
- "Three Concepts of the Balance of Payments and the So-Called Dollar Shortage", 1950, The Economic Journal (EJ).
- "Schumpeter's Economic Methodology", 1951, REStat.
- The Political Economy of Monopoly, 1952 (online e-book).
- "The Characteristics and Classification of Oligopoly", 1952, Kyklos.
- The Economics of Sellers' Competition, 1952 (online e-book).
- "Dollar Shortage and Disparities in the Growth of Productivity", 1954, Scottish JPE.
- "The Problem of Verification in Economics", 1955, Southern EJ.
- "Characteristics and Types of Price Discrimination", 1955, in Stigler, editor, Business Concentration and Price Policies.
- "Relative Prices and Aggregate Spending in the Analysis of Devaluation", 1955, AER.
- "The Inferiority Complex of the Social Sciences", 1956, in Sennholz, editor, On Freedom and Free Enterprise.
- "The Terms-of-Trade Effects of Devaluation upon Real Income and the Balance of Trade", 1956, Kyklos.
- "Professor Hicks' Revision of Demand Theory", 1957, AER.
- "Disputes, Paradoxes and Dilemmas Concerning Economic Development", 1957, RISE.
- "Equilibrium and Disequilibrium: Misplaced concreteness and disguised politics", 1958, EJ.
- "Can There Be Too Much Research?", 1958, Science.
- "Structure and Structural Change: Weaselwords and jargon", 1958, ZfN.
- "The Optimum Lag of Imitation Behind Innovation", 1958, Festskrift til Frederik Zeuthen.
- "Statics and Dynamics: Kaleidoscopic words", 1959, Southern EJ.
- Micro and Macro-Economics: Contested boundaries and claims of superiority, 1960.
- "Operational Concepts and Mental Constructs in Model and Theory Formation", 1960, GdE.
- "The Supply of Inventors and Inventions", 1960, WWA.
- "Another View of Cost-Push and Demand-Pull Inflation", 1960, REStat.
- "Are the Social Sciences Really Inferior?", 1961, Southern EJ.
- The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States, 1962.
- Essays in Economic Semantics, 1963.
- "Conceptos operativos y constructos mentales en la elaboración de los modelos y de la teoría", 1963, Estudios económicos. Bahía Blanca, Argentina.
- "Why Economists Disagree", 1964, Proceedings of APS.
- International Payments, Debts and Gold, 1964.
- "The Cloakroom Rule of International Reserve Creation and Resources Transfer", 1965, QJE.
- "Adjustment, Compensatory Correction and Financing of Imbalances in International Payments", 1965, in Baldwin et al., Trade, Growth and the Balance of Payments.
- "The Need for Monetary Reserves", 1966, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, Quarterly Review (BNLQR).
- "Operationalism and Pure Theory in Economics", in Krupp, editor, The Structure of Economics.
- "Corporate Management, National Interest and Behavioral Theory", 1967, JPE.
- "Theories of the Firm: Marginalist, behavioral and managerial", 1967, AER.
- "If Matter Could Talk", 1969, in Morgenbesser et al., editors, Philosophy, Science and Methodology.
- "Liberalism and Choice of Freedoms", 1969, in Streissler et al., editors, Roads to Freedom: Essays in honor of Friedrich A. von Hayek.
- "Eurodollar Creation: A mystery story", 1970, BNLQR.
- "Homo Oeconomicus and His Class Mates", 1970, in Natanson, editor, Phenomenology and Social Reality.
- "The Universal Bogey", 1972, in Preston and Corry, editors, Essays in Honor of Lord Robbins.
- "Friedrich von Hayek's Contributions to Economics", 1974, Swedish JE.
- "A History of Thought on Economic Integration", 1977, Columbia University Press.
- "Knowledge: Its Creation, Distribution and Economic Significance", Princeton University Press.
- Vol. 1: Knowledge and Knowledge Production, 1981
- Vol. 2:The Branches of Learning, 1982
- Vol. 3: The Economics of Information and Human Capital, 1984
- Machlup, Fritz (November 1984). "Por qué discrepan los economistas". Estudios económicos. 3 (5/6): 69–82. doi:10.52292/j.estudecon.1984.907.
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ Chipman, J.S. (2008). "Machlup, Fritz (1902–1983)". In Durlauf, S.N.; Blume, L.E. (eds.). The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. London: Macmillan Palgrave. pp. 1–3. doi:10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5_925-2. ISBN 978-1-349-95121-5.
- ^ a b "General Information | IEA".
- ^ May, Clifford D. (31 January 1983). "FRITZ MACHLUP, 80, AN ECONOMIST, DIES". The New York Times.
- ^ a b Crawford, S (October 1983). "The origin and development of a concept: the information society". Bulletin of the Medical Library Association. 71 (4): 380–385. PMC 227258. PMID 6652297.
- ^ a b Haberler, Gottfried (1983). "Fritz Machlup In Memoriam" (PDF). Cato Journal. 3 (1): 11.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "Machlup (Fritz) papers".
- ^ Langlois, Richard N (1985). "From the Knowledge of Economics to the Economics of Knowledge: Fritz Machlup on Methodology and on the 'Knowledge Society'" (PDF). In Samuels, Warren J (ed.). Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology. Vol. 3. pp. 225–235. ISBN 978-0-89232-616-7. OCLC 1192122453. S2CID 37979985.
- ^ Klausinger, Hansjoerg (June 2014). "Academic Anti-Semitism and the Austrian School: Vienna, 1918–1945" (PDF). Atlantic Economic Journal. 42 (2): 191–204. doi:10.1007/s11293-014-9410-x. S2CID 154581753.
- ^ "Fritz Machlup". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 2022-11-09.
- ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2022-11-09.
- ^ "American Economic Association". www.aeaweb.org. Retrieved 2023-12-22.
- ^ Machlup, Fritz (2016). Knowledge: Its Creation, Distribution and Economic Significance, Volume III: The Economics of Information and Human Capital. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-64049-5.[page needed]
- ^ "Bellagio Group". MIT. Retrieved 3 August 2020.
External links
edit- May, Clifford D. (31 January 1983). "Fritz Machlup, 80, An Economist, Dies". The New York Times. Retrieved 8 September 2023.
- The Fritz Machlup papers at the Hoover Institution Archives.
- The Mont Pelerin Society records at the Hoover Institution Archives.
- Works by or about Fritz Machlup at the Internet Archive