Geoffrey Colin Harcourt (27 June 1931 – 7 December 2021) was an Australian academic

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the 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 field there are ...

and leading member of the

post-Keynesian Post-Keynesian economics is a school of economic thought with its origins in '' The General Theory'' of John Maynard Keynes, with subsequent development influenced to a large degree by Michał Kalecki, Joan Robinson, Nicholas Kaldor, Sidney ...

school. He studied at the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb no ...

and then 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 ...

Biography

After studying economics at the

he moved to the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

, where he received his doctorate. In 1958 he moved to the

University of Adelaide The University of Adelaide (informally Adelaide University) is a public research university located in Adelaide, South Australia. Established in 1874, it is the third-oldest university in Australia. The university's main campus is located on N ...

as a lecturer and was appointed to a chair in Economics at

Adelaide Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The dem ...

in 1967. (He was a University Lecturer at Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity Hall 1964–66, on leave without pay from Adelaide). He was a University Lecturer (1982–90) and Reader (1990–98) in the Faculty of Economics at Cambridge and a Fellow and College Lecturer in Economics,

Jesus College, Cambridge Jesus College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's full name is The College of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist and the glorious Virgin Saint Radegund, near Cambridge. Its common name comes fr ...

, 1982–98, and was President of Jesus College Cambridge, 1988–89 and 1990–92. Harcourt made major contributions to the understanding of the ideas of Keynes,

Joan Robinson Joan Violet Robinson (''née'' Maurice; 31 October 1903 – 5 August 1983) was a British economist well known for her wide-ranging contributions to economic theory. She was a central figure in what became known as post-Keynesian economics. B ...

and other Cambridge economists. He also made important contributions in his own right to

and post- Kaleckian theory. A review article of one of his volumes of 'Selected Essays' argues that (i) insofar as he has written on capital theory, it has been as an innovator and not as a mere raconteur, and (ii) that he has developed his own suite of post-Keynesian models – this is evident, for example, in his 1965 paper "A two-sector model of the distribution of income and the level of employment in the short-run" which is reprinted in ''The Social Science Imperialists: Selected Essays of G.C. Harcourt'' (edited by Prue Kerr). He was married to Joan Harcourt and they had four children: Wendy Harcourt, a full professor at the

International 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 ...

Erasmus University Rotterdam Erasmus University Rotterdam (abbreviated as ''EUR'', nl, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam ) is a public research university located in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The university is named after Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, a 15th-century humani ...

(married to Claudio Sardoni, honorary professor at

La Sapienza University of Rome The Sapienza University of Rome ( it, Sapienza – Università di Roma), also called simply Sapienza or the University of Rome, and formally the Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza", is a public research university located in Rome, Ita ...

, with two children, Caterina Sardoni and Emma Claire Sardoni); Robert Harcourt, a marine ecology professor at Macquarie University;

Tim Harcourt Tim Harcourt is an Australian economist who is the J.W. Nevile Fellow in economics at the UNSW Business School, and an advisor to the Government of South Australia on international engagement. Harcourt was awarded a Bachelor of Economics (Hono ...

, also an economist (married to Jo Bosben); and Rebecca Harcourt, program manager for Indigenous business education at the

University of New South Wales The University of New South Wales (UNSW), also known as UNSW Sydney, is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is one of the founding members of Group of Eight, a coalition of Australian research-intensiv ...

. Harcourt died on 7 December 2021, at the age of 90.

Honours

Selected publications

Parker, Robert Henry Robert Henry Parker (September 1932 – 24 July 2016)Nobes, ChristopheRobert Henry Parker, 1932–2016 ObituaryRetrieved 2016-10-31. was a British accounting scholar, and Emeritus Professor at the University of Exeter,armondsworth, Eng. Penguin Books, 1971. * Harcourt, Geoffrey Colin. ''Some Cambridge controversies in the theory of capital.'' CUP Archive, 1972. * ''The Social Science Imperialists. Selected Essays.'' Edited by Prue Kerr, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982). Reprinted in the Routledge Library Editions Series in 2003. * ''On Political Economists and Modern Political Economy. Selected Essays of G.C. Harcourt.'' Edited by Claudio Sardoni. (London: Routledge, 1992). Reprinted in the Routledge Library Editions Series in 2003. * ''Post-Keynesian Essays in Biography: Portraits of Twentieth Century Political Economists.'' (Basingstoke, Hants: Macmillan, 1993). * ''Capitalism, Socialism and Post-Keynesianism. Selected Essays of G.C. Harcourt.'' (Cheltenham, Glos., Edward Elgar, 1995). * ''Selected Essays on Economic Policy.'' (London: Palgrave, 2001). * ''50 Years a Keynesian and Other Essays.'' (London: Palgrave, 2001). * ''The Structure of Post-Keynesian Economics. The Core Contributions of the Pioneers.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. * (With Prue Kerr) ''Joan Robinson.'' Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. * (with Peter Kriesler, eds) ''The Oxford Handbook of Post-Keynesian Economics. Volume 1: Theory and Origins.'' New York, Oxford University Press, 2013. Volume 2: ''Critiques and Methodology.'' * (with Joseph Halevi, Peter Kriesler and JW Nevile) ''Post-Keynesian Essays from Down Under: Theory and Policy from an Historical Perspective.'' Four Volumes. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

Book chapters

Articles, a selection

* Harcourt, Geoffrey Colin. "Some Cambridge controversies in the theory of capital." ''Journal of Economic Literature'' 7.2 (1969): 369–405. * Harcourt, Geoffrey C., and Peter Kenyon. "Pricing and the investment decision." ''Kyklos'' 29.3 (1976): 449–477. * Hamouda, Omar F., and Geoffrey Colin Harcourt. "Post Keynesianism: From Criticism to Coherence?." ''Bulletin of Economic Research'' 40.1 (1988): 1-33.c * Cohen, Avi J., and Geoffrey C. Harcourt.
Retrospectives: Whatever happened to the Cambridge capital theory controversies?
" ''Journal of Economic Perspectives'' (2003): 199–214.

References

External links

A lengthy Interview by Alan Macfarlane with Geoff Harcourt
(where he talks about his life, the Cambridge controversies and other aspects of economic theory) may be found at The University of Cambridge. {{DEFAULTSORT:Harcourt, Geoffrey 1931 births 2021 deaths Australian economists Companions of the Order of Australia Fellows of Jesus College, Cambridge People from Melbourne Post-Keynesian economists University of Adelaide faculty