Jacob Viner
Encyclopedia
Jacob Viner was a Canadian economist and is considered with Frank Knight
Frank Knight
Frank Hyneman Knight was an American economist who spent most of his career at the University of Chicago, where he became one of the founders of the Chicago school. Nobel laureates James M. Buchanan, Milton Friedman and George Stigler were all students of Knight at Chicago. Knight supervised...

 and Henry Simons one of the "inspiring" mentors of the early Chicago School of Economics in the 1930s: he was one of the leading figures of the Chicago faculty.

Biography

Viner was born in 1892 in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

, Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

 to Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

n immigrant parents and earned his undergraduate degree at McGill University
McGill University
Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...

 in 1914. His doctorate was earned at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

, where he wrote his dissertation under Frank W. Taussig, the international trade economist. He was a professor at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

 from 1916 to 1917 and from 1919 to 1946. At various times Viner also taught at Stanford and Yale Universities and went twice to the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies
Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies
The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies is a highly selective postgraduate educational and research institute situated in Geneva, Switzerland...

 in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1946 he left for Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

, where he remained until his retirement in 1960.

Viner played a role in government, most notably as an advisor to Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau
Henry Morgenthau
Henry Morgenthau may refer to:* Henry Morgenthau, Sr. , United States diplomat* Henry Morgenthau, Jr. , United States Secretary of the Treasury* Henry Morgenthau, III , author and television producer...

 during the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 he served as co-rapporteur to the economic and financial group of the Council on Foreign Relations
Council on Foreign Relations
The Council on Foreign Relations is an American nonprofit nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs...

' War and Peace Studies
War and Peace Studies
War and Peace Studies was a project carried out by the Council on Foreign Relations between 1939 and 1945 before and during American involvement in World War II. It was intended to advise the U.S. Government on conduct in the war and the subsequent peace....

project, along with Harvard economist Alvin Hansen
Alvin Hansen
Alvin Harvey Hansen , 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...

.

At both Chicago and Princeton, Viner had a reputation as being one of the toughest professors, and many students were terrified by the prospect of studying under him. To his friends and family, however, he was known to be wise, witty and kind. Nobel laureate Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman was an American economist, statistician, academic, and author who taught at the University of Chicago for more than three decades...

 studied under Viner while attending the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

.

Work

Viner was a noted opponent of John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes of Tilton, CB FBA , was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments...

 during the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

. While he agreed with the policies of government spending that Keynes pushed for, Viner argued that Keynes's analysis was flawed and would not stand in the long run.

Known for his enduring economic modelling of the firm, including the long- and short-run cost curves
Long run and short run
In macroeconomics, the long run is the conceptual time period in which there are no fixed factors of production as to changing the output level by changing the capital stock or by entering or leaving an industry. The long run contrasts with the short run, in which some factors are variable and...

, his work is still used today. Viner is further known for having added the terms "trade creation
Trade creation
Trade creation is an economic term related to international economics in which trade flows are redirected due to the formation of a free trade area or a customs union. The issue was firstly brought into discussion by Jacob Viner , together with the trade diversion effect...

" and "trade diversion
Trade diversion
Trade diversion is an economic term related to international economics in which trade is diverted from a more efficient exporter towards a less efficient one by the formation of a free trade agreement or a customs union.-Occurrence:...

" to the canon of economics in 1950. He also made important contributions to the theory of international trade and to the history of economic thought. While he was at Chicago, Viner co-edited the Journal of Political Economy with Frank Knight
Frank Knight
Frank Hyneman Knight was an American economist who spent most of his career at the University of Chicago, where he became one of the founders of the Chicago school. Nobel laureates James M. Buchanan, Milton Friedman and George Stigler were all students of Knight at Chicago. Knight supervised...

.

His most influential work on the history of economic thought Studies in the Theory of International Trade (1937) is the source for much of the knowledge of the Bullionist Controversy in 19th Century Britain.

Controversies

Viner spoke at the Conference on Atomic Energy Control in 1945, telling the conference 'that the atomic bomb was the cheapest way yet devised of killing human beings' and that atomic bombs 'will be peacemaking in effect' - perhaps making him the founder of nuclear deterrence.

Major publications

  • "Some Problems of Logical Method in Political Economy", 1917, JPE
  • "Price Policies: the determination of market price", 1921.
  • Dumping: A problem in international trade, 1923.
  • Canada's Balance of International Indebtedness: 1900–1913, 1924.
  • "The Utility Concept in Value Theory and its Critics", 1925, JPE.
  • "Adam Smith and Laissez-Faire", 1927, JPE
  • "The Present Status and Future Prospects of Quantitative Economics", 1928, AER
  • "Mills' Behavior of Prices", 1929, QJE
  • "Costs Curves and Supply Curves," Zeitschrift für Nationalölkonomie, 3, pp. 23-46. Reprinted in R. B. Emmett, ed. 2002, The Chicago Tradition in Economics, 1892-1945, Routledge, v. 6, pp. 192- 215.
  • "The Doctrine of Comparative Costs", 1932, WWA
  • "Inflation as a Possible Remedy for the Depression", 1933, Proceedings of Institute of Public Affairs, Univ. of Georgia
  • "Mr. Keynes and the Causes of Unemployment", 1936, QJE.
  • Studies in the Theory of International Trade, 1937.
  • "The Short View and the Long in Economic Policy," American Economic Review, 30(1), Part 1 1940, pp. 1-15.
  • "Marshall's Economics, in Relation to the Man and to his Times", 1941, AER
  • Trade Relations Between Free-Market and Controlled Economies, 1943.
  • "International Relations between State-Controlled National Economies", 1944, AER.
  • "Prospects for Foreign Trade in the Post-War World", 1946, Manchester Statistical Society.
  • "Power Versus Plenty as Objectives of Foreign Policy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries", 1948, World Politics
  • "Bentham and J.S. Mill: the Utilitarian Background", 1949, AER
  • The Customs Union Issue, 1950.
  • "A Modest Proposal for Some Stress on Scholarship in Graduate Training", 1950 (reprinted in 1991)
  • International Economics, 1951.
  • International Trade and Economic Development, 1952.
  • "Schumpeter's History of Economic Analysis," American Economic Review, 44(5), 1954, pp. 894-910.
  • "`Fashion' in Economic Thought", 1957, Report of 6th Conference of Princeton Graduate Alumni
  • "International Trade Theory and its Present-Day Relevance", 1955, Economics and Public Policy
  • The Long View and the Short: Studies in Economic Theory, 1958.
  • "Stability and Progress: the poorer countries' problem", 1958, in Hague, editor, Stability and Progress in the World Economy
  • Five Lectures on Economics and Freedom, 1959 (Wabash Lectures, publ. 1991)
  • "The Intellectual History of Laissez-Faire", 1960, J Law Econ
  • "Hayek on Freedom and Coercion", 1960, Southern EJ
  • "Relative Abundance of the Factors and International Trade", 1962, Indian EJ
  • "The Necessary and Desirable Range of Discretion to be Allowed to a Monetary Authority", 1962, in Yeager, editor, In Search of a Monetary Constitution
  • "Progressive Individualism as Original Sin", 1963, Canadian J of Econ & Poli Sci
  • "The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill", 1963, Univ of Toronto Quarterly
  • "The Economist in History", 1963, American Economic Review, 53(2), pp. 1-22
  • "The United States as a Welfare State", 1963, in Higgenbotham, editor, Man, Science, Learning and Education
  • Problems of Monetary Control, 1964.
  • "Comment on my 1936 Review of Keynes", 1964, in Lekachman, editor, Keynes's General Theory
  • "Introduction", in J. Rae, Life of Adam Smith, 1965.
  • "Adam Smith", 1968, in Sills, editor, International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences
  • "Mercantilist Thought", 1968, in Sills, editor, International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences
  • "Man's Economic Status", 1968, in Clifford, editor, Man Versus Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain.
  • "Satire and Economics in the Augustan Age of Satire", 1970, in Miller et al., editors, The Augustan Milieu
  • The Role of Providence in the Social Order, 1972.
  • Religious Thought and Economic Society, 1978.
  • Essays on the Intellectual History of Economics, 1991.

Further reading

  • Markwell, Donald, John Maynard Keynes and International Relations: Economic Paths to War and Peace, Oxford University Press, 2008.

External links

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