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Lionel Charles Robbins, Baron Robbins (1898 -
1984) was a British economics|economist of the
20th century who proposed one of the early
contemporary definitions of economics, "Economics
is a science which studies human behavior as a
relationship between ends and scarce means which
have alternative uses."

Lionel Robbins was a peculiar Englishman in the
economics world of the 1920s for a very simple
reason: he was not a Alfred Marshall|Marshallian
but rather a follower of William Stanley Jevons
and Philip Wicksteed. However odd, what really
made him downwright unique in Britain was that he
had actually read the Continental European
economists - Léon Walras, Vilfredo Pareto, Eugen
von Böhm-Bawerk, Friedrich von Wieser and Knut
Wicksell. As a result of his
Jevonian-Lausanne-Austrian-Swedish infections,
Lord Robbins was instrumental in shifting the
train of Anglo-Saxon economics off its Marshallian
rails and onto Continental ones. 

His tools were the London School of Economics and
a famous 1932 essay on economic methodology. 
Succeeding the unfortunate Allyn Young to the
chair of the L.S.E. in 1929, the thirty-year old
Robbins proceeded quickly. Among his first
appointments was Friedrich A. Hayek, who bred a
new generation of English-speaking "continentals"
such as John Hicks, Nicholas Kaldor, Lerner and
Scitovsky.   

Robbins's early essays were very combative in
spirit, stressing the subjectivist theory of value
beyond what Anglo-Saxon economics had been used
to. His famous work on costs (1930, 1934) helped
bring Wieser's "alternative cost" theorem of
supply to England (which was opposed to Marshall's
"real cost" theory of supply). His critique of the
Marshallian theory of the representative firm
(1928), and his critique of the Pigovian Welfare
Economics (1932, 1938), helped put an end to the
Marshallian empire -- aided and abetted (and
occasionally thwarted) every step of the way by
his kindred spirit across the pond, Frank Knight.

It was his 1932 Essay on the Nature and
Significance of Economic Science where Robbins
made his Continental credentials clear. Redefining
the scope of economics to be "the science which
studies human behavior as a relationship between
scarce means which have alternative uses"
(Robbins, 1932). His defense of a priori theory
and attack on Marshallian intuitionism is
reminiscent of Ludwig von Mises|von Mises's essay.


Robbins was initially opposed to Keynes's General
Theory. His 1934 treatise on the Great Depression
is an exemplary Neoclassical analysis of that
period. Indeed, Robbins always saw his L.S.E. as a
bulwark against Cambridge, whether it was
populated by Marshallians or Keynesians. However,
he was eventually to recant and accept the
Keynesian Revolution.  

In the latter part of his life, Robbins turned to
the history of economic thought, publishing
various classic studies on English doctrinal
history. Although the ascendancy of the L.S.E. is
foremost among his legacies, Robbins is also
greatly responsible for the modern British
university system - having advocated its massive
expansion in the 1960s.

==External link==

*http://www.lse.ac.uk/lsehistory/robbins.htm
Biography at LSE website