Sir Dennis Holme Robertson (23 May 1890 – 21 April 1963) was an English economist who taught at

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

and

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

Universities.

Biography

Robertson, the son of a

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Brit ...

clergyman, was born in

Lowestoft Lowestoft ( ) is a coastal town and civil parish in the East Suffolk (district), East Suffolk district of Suffolk, England.OS Explorer Map OL40: The Broads: (1:25 000) : . As the List of extreme points of the United Kingdom, most easterly UK se ...

and educated as a scholar of Eton and at

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...

, where he read Classics and Economics, graduating in 1912. Robertson worked closely with

John Maynard Keynes John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, ( ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in ...

in the 1920s and 1930s, during the years when Keynes was developing many of the ideas that later were incorporated in his '' General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money''. Keynes wrote that at that time, working with Robertson, it was good to work with someone who had a "completely first class mind". Robertson was the first to use the term "

liquidity trap A liquidity trap is a situation, described in Keynesian economics, in which, "after the rate of interest has fallen to a certain level, liquidity preference may become virtually absolute in the sense that almost everyone prefers holding cash rat ...

".Richard Sutc
''The Liquidity Trap: A Lesson from Macroeconomic History for Today''
note 7 Ultimately however, differences of temperament and views about economic theory and practice (especially in the 1937 debate over the savings-investment relationship in the General Theory) led to some estrangement between the two men. Robertson died of a

heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which ma ...

at Cambridge on 21 April 1963.

Main publications

* ''A Study of Industrial Fluctuations'', 1915. * "Economic Incentive", 1921, ''Economica''. * ''Money'', 1922. * ''The Control of Industry'', 1923. * "Those Empty Boxes", 1924, ''EJ''. * ''Banking Policy and the Price Level'', 1926. * "Increasing Returns and the Representative Firm", 1930, ''EJ''. * ''Economic Fragments'', 1931. * "How Do We Want Gold to Behave?", in The International Gold Problem (London: Humphrey Milford, 1932) * "Saving and Hoarding", 1933, ''EJ''. * "Some Notes on Mr Keynes's "General Theory of Employment"", 1936, ''QJE''. * "Alternative Theories of the Rate of Interest", 1937, ''EJ''. * "Mr Keynes and Finance: A note", 1938, ''EJ''. * "Mr. Keynes and the Rate of Interest", 1940, in ''Essays in Monetary Theory'' * ''Essays in Monetary Theory'', 1940. * "Wage Grumbles", 1949 in ''Readings in the Theory of Income Distribution''. * ''Utility and All That'', 1952. * ''Britain in the World Economy'', 1954. * ''Economic Commentaries'', 1956. * ''Lectures on Economic Principles'', 1957–9. * ''Growth, Wages, Money'', 1961. * ''Essays in Money and Interest'', 1966

References

Sources

* Gordon Fletcher (2000), ''Understanding Dennis Robertson: The Man and His Work''. * J.R. Presley (1979), ''Robertsonian Economics''. * Ben B. Seligman (1962), ''Main Currents in Modern Economics: Economic Thought since 1870''.

External links

*
New School: Dennis Robertson
{{DEFAULTSORT:Robertson, Dennis 1890 births 1963 deaths People from Lowestoft People educated at Eton College Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge English economists Presidents of the Cambridge Union Knights Bachelor Professors of Political Economy (Cambridge, 1863)