Harry Gunnison Brown (May 7, 1880– March 11, 1975) was a

Georgist Georgism, also called in modern times Geoism, and known historically as the single tax movement, is an economic ideology holding that, although people should own the value they produce themselves, the economic rent derived from land—including ...

economist teaching at

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

in the early 20th century.

Paul Samuelson Paul Anthony Samuelson (May 15, 1915 – December 13, 2009) was an American economist who was the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. When awarding the prize in 1970, the Swedish Royal Academies stated that he "h ...

named Brown in a list of "American saints in economics" that included only 6 other economists born after 1860.

Early life

Harry Gunnison Brown was born in

Troy, New York Troy is a city in the U.S. state of New York and the county seat of Rensselaer County. The city is located on the western edge of Rensselaer County and on the eastern bank of the Hudson River. Troy has close ties to the nearby cities of Albany a ...

to Milton Peers and Elizabeth H. (Gunnison) Brown. He graduated from

Williams College Williams College is a Private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a col ...

in 1904, studied at

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

and he earned his Ph.D. at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

in 1909. While studying at Yale, Brown became a protégé of

Irving Fisher Irving Fisher (February 27, 1867 – April 29, 1947) was an American economist, statistician, inventor, eugenicist and progressive social campaigner. He was one of the earliest American neoclassical economists, though his later work on debt def ...

. Fisher was one of the pioneers in the development of mathematical economics and econometrics in the United States. On August 23, 1911, he married Fleda Phillips in Columbia, New York. While continuing his career in economics, he had three children: Cleone Elsa Brown, and Philips Hamlin Brown (29 April 1918 - 4 February 2019) and Richmond Flint Brown (April 5, 1925 - ). Following the death of his first wife in 1953, Dr. Brown was married to librarian and economist Elizabeth Read Brown (1902–1987) until his death in 1975. Together they co-authored six articles and she was a fervent promoter of his work. He has three living granddaughters:

Fleda Brown Fleda Brown (born 1944 in Columbia, Missouri) is an American poet and author. She is also known as Fleda Brown Jackson. Biography Fleda Brown was born in Columbia, Missouri, and raised in Fayetteville, Arkansas. In 1978 she joined the Universi ...

, Melinda Brown Putz, and Michelle Brown Griggs, and four living grandsons: Kirk Brown, Kevin Brown, Alan Luckey, and Roger Luckey. Two other grandsons, Mark Brown and Dennis Luckey are deceased.

Academic career

After receiving his Ph.D., Brown worked as an instructor under Irving Fisher in the economics department at Yale University until 1915. Brown held

Herbert Davenport Herbert Joseph Davenport (August 10, 1861 – June 15, 1931) was an American economist and critic of the Austrian School, educator and author. Biography Born in Vermont, Davenport studied at the University of Chicago for a year or so under Thor ...

in high regard, and in 1915 Brown accepted a position under Davenport in the

College of Business A business school is a university-level institution that confers degrees in business administration or management. A business school may also be referred to as school of management, management school, school of business administration, o ...

at the

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou, MU, or Missouri) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus Universit ...

. Brown worked under Davenport for one year at Missouri, until Davenport left for a position at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

in 1916. Brown remained at MU, and during his career he became chairman of the economics department as well as dean of the College of Business and Public Administration. Brown retired from MU in 1950. For much of his career, he was mainly known North America's foremost advocate of the ideas of a ''

land tax A land value tax (LVT) is a levy on the value of land without regard to buildings, personal property and other improvements. It is also known as a location value tax, a point valuation tax, a site valuation tax, split rate tax, or a site-value r ...

''. He is described by

Mason Gaffney Merrill Mason Gaffney (October 18, 1923 – July 16, 2020) was an American economist and a major critic of Neoclassical economics from a Georgist point of view. Gaffney first read Henry George's masterwork ''Progress and Poverty'' as a high schoo ...

as having refuted: *

John Bates Clark John Bates Clark (January 26, 1847 – March 21, 1938) was an American neoclassical economist. He was one of the pioneers of the marginalist revolution and opponent to the Institutionalist school of economics, and spent most of his career as ...

's argument that the unearned increment was constructive *

Frank Knight Frank Hyneman Knight (November 7, 1885 – April 15, 1972) was an American economist who spent most of his career at the University of Chicago, where he became one of the founders of the Chicago School. Nobel laureates Milton Friedman, George S ...

's argument that land is like all other resources because it has an opportunity cost *

Richard T. Ely Richard Theodore Ely (April 13, 1854 – October 4, 1943) was an American economist, author, and leader of the Progressive movement who called for more government intervention to reform what they perceived as the injustices of capitalism, especial ...

's argument that 'ripening costs' of land speculators justify

urban sprawl Urban sprawl (also known as suburban sprawl or urban encroachment) is defined as "the spreading of urban developments (such as houses and shopping centers) on undeveloped land near a city." Urban sprawl has been described as the unrestricted growt ...

.Gaffney, Mason (1998) Harry Gunnison Brown in ''The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics'' (1987) edited by John Eatwell, Murray Milgate, and Peter Newman.

Economics career

Harry Gunnison Brown was known throughout the United States as a Georgist, and stood out as a staunch believer and advocacy of the ideas of

Henry George Henry George (September 2, 1839 – October 29, 1897) was an American political economist and journalist. His writing was immensely popular in 19th-century America and sparked several reform movements of the Progressive Era. He inspired the eco ...

, through a majority of his life he argued for tax reform along the lines proposed by George. A well known area of specialization of Harry Gunnison Brown was that of taxation, specifically tax incidence. His text, ''The Economics of Taxation','' was known as a benchmark for texts on the subject of Tax incidence.

Works

Brown, Harry. G. (1931) ''Economic Science and the Common Welfare'' McDonough, J. (1925). ''The Yale Law Journal,'' ''35''(2), 249–251. doi:10.2307/789527

References

External links