[From The Burden of Plenty (1935), edited By Graham Hutton.] I want to start by saying something about the phrase “poverty in plenty” of which we hear so much. I cannot help thinking that it may be...
Lionel Robbins
Lionel Charles Robbins (1898-1984) was one of the leading English economists of the twentieth century. His An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science (1932) is as an outstanding statement of the Misesian view of economic method; that is, namely, that economics is a social science and must advance its propositions by means of deductive reasoning and not through the methods used in the natural sciences. Robbins’ The Great Depression (1934) brilliantly applies the Austrian theory of the business cycle to explain the depression—which, he notes, was of unprecedented severity.
