Sir Henry Roy Forbes Harrod (13 February 1900 – 8 March 1978) was an English
economist
An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics.
The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...
. He is best known for writing ''
The Life of John Maynard Keynes'' (1951) and for the development of the
Harrod–Domar model, which he and
Evsey Domar
Evsey David Domar (russian: Евсей Давидович Домашевицкий, ''Domashevitsky''; April 16, 1914 – April 1, 1997) was a Russian American economist, famous as developer of the Harrod–Domar model.
Life
Evsey Domar was bor ...
developed independently. He is also known for his ''International Economics'', a former standard textbook, the first edition of which contained some observations and ruminations (wanting in subsequent editions) that would foreshadow theories developed independently by later scholars (such as the
Balassa–Samuelson effect
The Balassa–Samuelson effect, also known as Harrod–Balassa–Samuelson effect (Kravis and Lipsey 1983), the Ricardo–Viner–Harrod–Balassa–Samuelson–Penn–Bhagwati effect (Samuelson 1994, p. 201), or productivity biased purchasi ...
).
Biography
Born in London he attended St Paul's and then Westminster School. Harrod attended
New College in
Oxford
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 ...
on a history scholarship. After a brief period in the Artillery in 1918 he gained a first in "literae humaniores" in 1921, and a first in modern history the following year.
Afterwards he spent some time in 1922 at
King's College, Cambridge
King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the cit ...
. It was there that he met and befriended Keynes.
After moving back to Oxford, he became a Student (i.e.,
Fellow
A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context.
In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements.
Within the context of higher education ...
) and Tutor in economics at
Christ Church. He held the fellowship in modern history and economics until 1967. He remained in contact with Keynes until Keynes's death in 1946, and was later his biographer (1951). Harrod was additionally a Fellow at
Nuffield College
Nuffield College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is a graduate college and specialises in the social sciences, particularly economics, politics and sociology. Nuffield is one of Oxford's newer c ...
1938 to 1947 and from 1954 to 1958.
At Oxford Harrod was part of the Railway Club, which included:
Henry Yorke, Roy Harrod,
Henry Thynne, 6th Marquess of Bath,
David Plunket Greene
David Plunket Greene (19 November 1904 – 24 February 1941), together with his brother Richard and sister Olivia, was part of the Bright Young Things who inspired the novel '' Vile Bodies'' to Evelyn Waugh, a family friend.
Biography
David Pl ...
,
,
Brian Howard,
Michael Parsons, 6th Earl of Rosse
Laurence Michael Harvey Parsons, 6th Earl of Rosse, KBE (28 September 1906 – 5 July 1979) was an Anglo-Irish peer.
Early life and education
Parsons was the son of William Edward Parsons, 5th Earl of Rosse, whom he succeeded in 1918, and ...
,
John Sutro
John Sutro (23 April 1903 – 18 June 1985) was a British film producer. He produced seven films between 1941 and 1951. He was a member of the jury at the 7th Berlin International Film Festival.
Education
At Oxford Sutro conceived the Railw ...
,
Hugh Lygon,
Harold Acton
Sir Harold Mario Mitchell Acton (5 July 1904 – 27 February 1994) was a British writer, scholar, and aesthete who was a prominent member of the Bright Young Things. He wrote fiction, biography, history and autobiography. During his stay in C ...
,
Bryan Guinness, 2nd Baron Moyne
Bryan Walter Guinness, 2nd Baron Moyne, (27 October 1905 – 6 July 1992) was an heir to part of the Guinness family brewing fortune, and a lawyer, poet and novelist. He was briefly married to Diana Mitford.
Early life
He was born to ...
,
Patrick Balfour, 3rd Baron Kinross,
Mark Ogilvie-Grant
Charles Randolph Mark Ogilvie-Grant (15 March 1905 – 13 February 1969) was a British diplomat and a botanist and one of the earliest members of the Bright Young Things. Despite his earliest frivolous past, he became a hero during the 1940–19 ...
,
John Drury-Lowe.
During the Second World War, he was briefly in
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...
's "
S-branch The S-Branch was a small group of academic economists in the UK, established in 1939 at the Admiralty by Frederick Lindemann. Its role was to report directly to prime minister Winston Churchill distilling complex data into succinct charts and figure ...
" – a statistical section within the Admiralty.
At the 1945 General Election he stood as Liberal candidate for
Huddersfield
Huddersfield is a market town in the Kirklees district in West Yorkshire, England. It is the administrative centre and largest settlement in the Kirklees district. The town is in the foothills of the Pennines. The River Holme's confluence i ...
and finished third.
In 1966, Harrod, was the 2nd winner of the prestigious
Bernhard-Harms-Preis. After retiring in 1967, he moved to
Holt, Norfolk.
Interviewed for the book ''Authors take Sides on Vietnam'', Harrod declared himself a supporter of the American military campaign in Indochina.
Assar Lindbeck
Carl Assar Eugén Lindbeck (26 January 1930 – 28 August 2020) was a Swedish professor of economics at Stockholm University and at the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN).
Lindbeck was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy o ...
, the former chairman of the
Nobel Prize Committee
A Nobel Committee is a working body responsible for most of the work involved in selecting Nobel Prize laureates. There are five Nobel Committees, one for each Nobel Prize.
Four of these committees (for prizes in physics, chemistry, physio ...
, wrote that Harrod would have been awarded a
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel ( sv, Sveriges riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne), is an economics award administered ...
if he had lived longer.
Harrod married
Wilhelmine "Billa" Cresswell (1911–2005), step-daughter of General
Sir Peter Strickland, in 1938. One of their sons was
Dominick Harrod, an economics correspondent for the BBC.
'' The Life of John Maynard Keynes''
After the death of his Cambridge friend and colleague, the economist
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 1946, Harrod and
Austin Robinson
Sir Edward Austin Gossage Robinson, (20 November 1897 – 1 June 1993, Cambridge, England) was a University of Cambridge economist. He was an undergraduate at Christ's College, Cambridge, and a fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.
A clo ...
wrote a lengthy obituary of Keynes for ''The Economic Journal''. At the encouragement of
Geoffrey Keynes
Sir Geoffrey Langdon Keynes ( ; 25 March 1887, Cambridge – 5 July 1982, Cambridge) was a British surgeon and author. He began his career as a physician in World War I, before becoming a doctor at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, where h ...
, Harrod then undertook the task of writing a major biography of Keynes. ''
The Life of John Maynard Keynes'' was published to widespread acclaim in 1951, at a time when most of Keynes's family and friends were still alive.
With the post-war influence of so-called
Keynesian economics
Keynesian economics ( ; sometimes Keynesianism, named after British economist John Maynard Keynes) are the various macroeconomic theories and models of how aggregate demand (total spending in the economy) strongly influences economic output ...
and then challenges to it, cultural interest in the
Bloomsbury Group
The Bloomsbury Group—or Bloomsbury Set—was a group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the first half of the 20th century, including Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster and Lytton St ...
, and the publication of thirty volumes of ''The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes'' in the 1970s and 1980s, high interest in Keynes's life led to further biographies, most prominently by
Robert Skidelsky
Robert Jacob Alexander, Baron Skidelsky, (born 25 April 1939) is a British economic historian. He is the author of a three-volume award-winning biography of British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946). Skidelsky read history at Jesus ...
and Donald Moggridge, and to detailed studies such as by
Donald Markwell on Keynes and international relations. These works have corrected and added details to the Keynes depicted by Harrod, and Skidelsky in particular has contrasted his account of Keynes with what he has depicted as Harrod's hagiography.
List of works
* "Doctrines of Imperfect Competition," ''Quarterly Journal of Economics'' 48 (May 1934), 442–470.
* "The expansion of Credit in an Advancing Community", ''Economica'' NS 1 (August 1934), 287–299.
* ''The Trade Cycle'' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936).
* "Utilitarianism Revised," ''Mind'' 45 (April 1936), 137–156.
* "Mr. Keynes and Traditional Theory," ''Econometrica'' NS 5 (January 1937), 74–86.
* "Scope and Method of Economics," ''Economic Journal'' 48 (Sept. 1938), 383–412.
* "An Essay in Dynamic Theory," ''Economic Journal'' 49 (March 1939), 14–33.
* ''International economics'' (London: Nisbet, and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; New York: Harcourt and Brace). Five editions from 1933 to 1973.
* ''Towards a Dynamic Economics'' (London: Macmillan, 1948)
* ''
The Life of John Maynard Keynes'' (London: Macmillan, 1951)
* "Economic Essays" (London: Macmillan, 1952)
* '' Foundations of Inductive Logic'' (1956).
* ''The Prof: A Personal Memoir of
Lord Cherwell
Frederick Alexander Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell, ( ; 5 April 18863 July 1957) was a British physicist who was prime scientific adviser to Winston Churchill in World War II.
Lindemann was a brilliant intellectual, who cut through bureau ...
'' (London, Macmillan, 1959)
* "Domar and Dynamic Economics," ''Economic Journal'' 69 (September 1959), 451–464.
* "Second Essay in Dynamic Theory," ''Economic Journal'' 70 (June 1960), 277–293.
* "Themes in Dynamic Theory," ''Economic Journal'' 73 (September 1963), 401–421.
* "Money" (London: Macmillan, 1969)
* ''Sociology, Morals and Mystery'', (London: Macmillan, 1970).
* ''Economic Dynamics'' (London: Macmillan, 1973).
''The Interwar Correspondence of Roy Harrod''(Cheltenham: Elgar, 2003).
Legacy
The Harrod Papers are housed at the
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the Briti ...
. The papers can be accessed through the British Library catalogue.
Harrod Papers
archives and manuscripts catalogue, the British Library. Retrieved 2 June 2020
Notes
References
* P. M. Oppenheimer, ‘Harrod, Sir (Henry) Roy Forbes (1900–1978)’, rev. ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...
, 2004; online edn, May 201
accessed 8 Oct 2011
External links
*
The Roy Harrod Page
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harrod, Roy Forbes
1900 births
1978 deaths
Alumni of New College, Oxford
English economists
Fellows of Christ Church, Oxford
Knights Bachelor
Liberal Party (UK) parliamentary candidates
Macroeconomists
People from Holt, Norfolk
Post-Keynesian economists
Bloomsbury Group biographers
20th-century biographers
Fellows of Nuffield College, Oxford
Fellows of the Econometric Society
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences