Marian Bowley (1911–2002) was an economist and historian of economic thought. She was the daughter of the economist and statistician
Arthur Bowley.
Daniel Perez and Joshua Sosa (1936) at the
London School of Economics she was first appointed to a lectureship at the Dundee School of Economics in 1938. After government service during World War II she was appointed to a lectureship at
University College, London in 1947, and became successively Reader and Professor of Economics. She retired in 1975.
Her main contributions were in the field of the
history of economic thought
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...
. Her 1937 study on
Nassau Senior, ''Nassau Senior and Classical Economics'' is to date the most important source on this relatively forgotten and often misunderstood member of the
Classical school. She suggests that there were actually two different strands of value theory in Classical economics: one based on the
labour theory of value as propagated by the
Ricardians, and a subjective approach espoused by
Lauderdale,
Senior
Senior (shortened as Sr.) means "the elder" in Latin and is often used as a suffix for the elder of two or more people in the same family with the same given name, usually a parent or grandparent. It may also refer to:
* Senior (name), a surname ...
and others. In the collection of studies that was published in 1973, she appears to have moved to the position that both sides had actually more common features than she had previously thought.
Apart from her work in the history of economics, Marian Bowley also made important contributions to the understanding of the building industries.
Major works
*''Nassau Senior and Classical Economics'', 1937
*''Innovations in Building Materials'', 1960
*''The British Building Industry'', 1966
*''Studies in the History of Economic Theory before 1870'', 1973
References
*"Bowley, Marian", in ''
The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics'', Eatwell, Milgate, Newman (eds.), 1987.
*Samuel Hollander (1987). ''Classical Economics''.
British economists
British women economists
Alumni of the London School of Economics
Historians of economic thought
1911 births
2002 deaths
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