Kurt Mandelbaum (13 November 1904 – 28 September 1995) was a German-British economist well known for his pioneering contribution in the field of the economics of development. Kurt Mandelbaum (also known as Kurt Martin) was one of a group of emigre economists from Central Europe who played a large role in founding the discipline of

development economics Development economics is a branch of economics which deals with economic aspects of the development process in low- and middle- income countries. Its focus is not only on methods of promoting economic development, economic growth and structural ...

in the UK, during and shortly after World War II. In general these economists doubted the usefulness of

neoclassical economics Neoclassical economics is an approach to economics in which the production, consumption and valuation (pricing) of goods and services are observed as driven by the supply and demand model. According to this line of thought, the value of a good ...

with its presumptions of smoothly operating markets and saw the role of the state as being key to the development process. The industrialization debates in the USSR in the 1920s were their starting point. In his youth Mandelbaum was involved with leftist politics and had several years at the Frankfurt School for Social Research. During the war worked with allied intelligence and subsequently joined the

Oxford Institute of Statistics Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the Un ...

. Whilst at Oxford he undertook his study of the problems of recovery in S.E. Europe. This small book which was to become one of core texts for the new discipline, stressed * the need to mobilize savings, * the need for infrastructure, * the extent of disguised rural unemployment, * the need for calculating inter-industry calculations (anticipating the use of

input-output analysis In computing, input/output (I/O, or informally io or IO) is the communication between an information processing system, such as a computer, and the outside world, possibly a human or another information processing system. Inputs are the signals ...

). In 1950 he moved to Manchester and with his colleague

W. Arthur Lewis Sir William Arthur Lewis (23 January 1915 – 15 June 1991) was a Saint Lucian economist and the James Madison Professor of Political Economy at Princeton University. Lewis was known for his contributions in the field of economic development. I ...

helped establish the Department of Economics at the University of Manchester as a major centre in Development Economics research and teaching. After retiring from Manchester he worked for a further seventeen years at the

Institute of Social Studies The International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam is an independent and international graduate school of policy-oriented critical social science. ISS was established in 1952 by Dutch universities and the Neth ...

at The Hague.Leeson, P. Obituary in the Manchester School Vol. LXIV No.1, pp.112-13.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mandelbaum, Kurt German development economists 1904 births 1995 deaths 20th-century German economists German emigrants to the United Kingdom Academics of the Victoria University of Manchester