Abstract
This chapter discusses intellectual influences on Young. He was a Ph.D. student of Richard Ely, who in turn was a student of Karl Knies, and Young was influenced by both. He was attracted to Ely’s ‘look and see’ method and commended Knies for not succumbing to the temptation of deciphering universal laws from historical studies. Young was also influenced by Adam Smith’s theory of growth and cast it in terms of cumulative causation. Young used Marshall’s Principles of Economics in class but made his own modifications and additions. He used Marshall’s concept of external economies and Veblen’s concept of cumulative causation in his theory of growth. He commended the English political economy for its method.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Knies’s other American students included John Bates Clark, E.R.A. Seligman, Herbert Baxter Adams and Andrew Dexter White. His students also included many famous Austrians such as Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk and Friedrich von Wieser.
- 2.
Ely to Young dated 8 July 2010.
- 3.
Young to Ely dated 3 November 1913.
- 4.
Ely to Young dated 16 March 1914.
- 5.
Young to Ely dated 24 November 1914.
- 6.
Ely to Young dated 16 March 1915.
- 7.
Young to Ely dated 14 July 1920.
- 8.
Young to Ely dated 28 June 1927.
- 9.
See preface of 1930 edition, p. v.
- 10.
Young to Ely dated 14 November 1921.
- 11.
- 12.
In letter to Jordan, dated 13 February 1911, Hise confidentially stated that Dr. Ely was very sanguine and that Jordan should accept Young’s account of the conversation between Ely and Young in which the offer was made.
- 13.
In a letter to Young, dated 19 March 1925, he stated: “Please do not worry about this matter in the least for it does not ‘rankle’ in the mind of anyone else except yourself.”
- 14.
Young’s letter to Ely dated 4 February 1913. See also Blitch (1995, pp. 39–40).
- 15.
Young’s letter to Ely dated 23 August 1917. See also Blitch (1995, p. 68).
- 16.
Ely to Young dated 16 March 1914.
- 17.
“For exposition’s sake, or because they thought logical consistency required it, or for some more subtle and obscure reason, economic theorists have often presented their doctrines as though they flowed from some first principle. But the first principle is generally purely ornamental, like the meaningless ‘desire for wealth.’ The real soundness of a system of thought depends upon its internal consistency and upon the accuracy with which it summarizes the pertinent parts of experience. These considerations hold true not only for so-called deductive economics (the ‘deduction’ is only a matter of expositional form) but also for ‘institutional’ or any other variety of economics” (Young 1925, 1927a, pp. 256–7).
- 18.
“English political economy, through all its own changes, held a central place in the midst of the various currents of nineteenth century economic thought. The other ‘schools,’ for the most part, took over its doctrines and built upon them, modifying here and rejecting there, or seized upon some of its obscurer elements or upon elements to which it seemed to give too little weight and elaborated them into what appeared at first to be competing systems, or frankly defined their own position largely in terms of opposition to its method and disagreements with its findings. The central position which English political economy held was in fact a position of the storm centre ” (Young 1928a; Mehrling and Sandilands 1999, p. 18).
- 19.
Schumpeter (1951/2003, p. 96) highlights the influence of Cournot and Thünen on Marshall’s Principles. Marshall himself, in the preface to the first edition, acknowledges the help of both Cournot and Thünen. Schumpeter further suggests that Marshall, given his reading habits, was unlikely to be aware of Jevons’s or Léon Walras’s works before 1890.
- 20.
- 21.
“Marshall’s was a one-thing-at-a-time method … there were times when he overlooked the full significance of the limitations he had put on himself” (Young 1924, p. 147).
- 22.
“Marshall made an elementary slip. He confuses his own demand curve with a utility curve. Utility curves go back to Jevons who introduced the notion. They are made up by adding ‘uses’… If you make it a curve, any point shows or measures the addition made to total satisfaction as the quantity of the good increases” (Young 1990, p. 39).
- 23.
“The different surpluses attributed to the consumer in his purchases of different commodities blot out one another. Consumers’ surplus as Marshall measures it, is not additive. Its sum, for any consumer, comes precisely to zero” (Young 1924, p. 147).
- 24.
“Really there is nothing in the concept at all, except that we all gain when improvements in industrial processes make costs less, and we are able to demand a larger supply of goods with the same amount of sacrifice or exertion. We are better off, but how much better off is unmeasurable” (Young 1990, p. 41).
- 25.
Offer curves were first introduced by Marshall and later extended by Edgeworth.
- 26.
There is some controversy on Veblen’s acquisition of English and his social and cultural isolation. While Joseph Dorfman’s Thorstein Veblen and His America said that Veblen learnt his English well when he was an adult, Thorstein’s older brother Andrew, in letters to Dorfman, countered this view by stating that he had bilingual training in speech from the start and was better equipped in English than his schoolmates or even some of his instructors. The myth that Thorstein knew no English until he was an adult, according to Andrew, may have been deliberately cultivated by him for reasons of his own. Also, Dorfman had greatly exaggerated his cultural isolation. See Rick Tilman (1992, pp. 4–5).
- 27.
Young’s letter to Jordan dated 14 April 1906. See also Blitch (1995, p. 22).
- 28.
Young’s memorandum to Jordan dated 23 January 1908.
- 29.
Young to Jordan dated 15 June 1908.
- 30.
Young to Jordan dated 23 March 1909.
- 31.
Young made reference to almost all major works of Veblen in his 1930 edition of Outlines for which he revised the first 13 chapters. See Ely et al. (1930, p. 19, 44, 137, 155).
References
Blitch, Charles P. (1995), Allyn Young: The Peripatetic Economist, Houndmills and London: Macmillan Press Ltd.
Currie, Lauchlin (1981), ‘Allyn Young and the development of growth theory’, Journal of Economic Studies, 8(1), pp. 52–61.
Currie, Lauchlin (1997), ‘Implications of an endogenous theory of growth in Allyn Young’s macroeconomic concept of increasing returns’, History of Political Economy, 29(3), 413–43.
Diggins, John P. (1978), The Bard of Savagery, New York: Seabury Press.
Dorfman, Joseph (1934), Thorstein Veblen and his America, New York: Augustus M. Kelley.
Dorfman, Joseph (1959), The Economic Mind in American Civilization, Vol. 1–5, New York: Viking Press.
Ely, Richard T. (1893/1900), Outlines of Economics, New York: The Macmillan Company.
Ely, Richard T. (1905), Labour Movement in America, New York: Macmillan.
Ely, Richard T. (1914), Property and Contract, New York: Macmillan.
Ely, Richard T., Thomas S. Adams, Max O. Lorenz and Allyn A. Young (1908), Outlines of Economics, New York: The Macmillan Company.
Ely, Richard T., Thomas S. Adams, Max O. Lorenz and Allyn A. Young (1930), Outlines of Economics, New York: The Macmillan Company.
Jevons, W. Stanley (1871), The Theory of Political Economy, London: Macmillan.
Marshall, Alfred (1890), Principles of Economics, London: Macmillan.
Marshall, Alfred (1919), Industry and Trade, London: Macmillan.
Marshall, Alfred (1923), Money, Credit and Commerce, London: Macmillan.
Marshall, Alfred and Mary Paley (1879), Economics of Industry, London: Macmillan.
McDougall, William (1910), ‘The rationality of economic activity’, Journal of Political Economy, 18pp.
Mehrling, Perry G. (1997), The Money Interest and the Public Interest, Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press.
Mehrling, Perry G. and Roger J. Sandilands (1999), Money and Growth: Selected Papers of Allyn Abbott Young, London and New York: Routledge.
Mitchell, Wesley (1924), ‘The prospects of economics’, in Tugwell, T. G. (ed.) (1924) Trend in Economics, New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Myrdal, Gunnar (1957), Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions, Oxford: Gerard Duckworth.
Pressman, Steven (1999), Fifty Major Economists, London and New York: Routledge.
Reisman, David (2012), The Social Economics of Thorstein Veblen, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Ross, Edward A. (1991), Social Control: A Survey of the Foundations of Order, New York: Macmillan.
Schumpeter, Joseph A. (1951/2003), Ten Great Economists from Marx to Keynes, San Diego: Simon Publications.
Schumpeter, Joseph A. (1954), History of Economic Analysis, London: Allen and Unwin.
Smith, Adam (1759/1976), The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Smith, Adam (1776/1976), An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sraffa, Piero (1926), ‘Laws of returns under competitive conditions’, Economic Journal (December), pp. 535–50.
Tilman, Rick (1992), Thorstein Veblen and His Critics, 1891–1963, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Tugwell, T.G. (ed.) (1924), Trend in Economics, New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Veblen, Thorstein (1898), ‘Why is economics not an evolutionary science?’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 12(4), pp. 373–97.
Veblen, Thorstein (1899a), The Theory of Leisure Class, New York: Macmillan.
Veblen, Thorstein (1899b), ‘The preconceptions of economic science’, Quarterly Journal of Economics (January), pp. 121–50.
Veblen, Thorstein (1904), The Theory of Business Enterprise, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Veblen, Thorstein (1914), The Instinct of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts, New York: Macmillan.
Veblen, Thorstein (1918), The Higher Learning in America: A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men, New York: B. W. Huebsch.
Veblen, Thorstein (1921), The Engineers and the Price System, New York: B. W. Huebsch.
Walker, D. A. (1977), ‘Thorstein Veblen’s economic system’, Economic Inquiry, 15, pp. 213–37.
Young, Allyn (1924), ‘Marshall on consumers’ surplus in international trade’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 39(1), pp. 144–50.
Young, Allyn (1925), ‘Review of The Trend of Economics’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 39(2), pp. 155–83. Reprinted in Young (1927a), pp. 232–60.
Young, Allyn (1927a), Economic Problems: New and Old, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Young, Allyn (1927b), ‘Economics as a field of research’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 42(1), pp. 1–25. Reprinted in Mehrling and Sandilands (1999), pp. 3–16.
Young, Allyn (1928a), ‘English Political Economy’, Economica, 8(22), pp. 1–15. Reprinted in Mehrling and Sandilands (1999), pp. 15–28.
Young, Allyn (1928b), ‘Increasing returns and economic progress’, Economic Journal, 38(152), pp. 527–42. Reprinted in Mehrling and Sandilands (1999), pp. 49–61.
Young, Allyn (1929a), ‘Economics’, Encyclopaedia Britannica 1928, London: The Encyclopaedia Britannica Company, pp. 925–32. Reprinted in Mehrling and Sandilands (1999), pp. 115–34.
Young, Allyn (1929b), ‘The creator of wealth’, The Book of Popular Science, New York: The Grolier Society, pp. 110–16. Reprinted in Mehrling and Sandilands (1999), pp. 149–52.
Young, Allyn (1929c), ‘The meaning of value’, The Book of Popular Science, New York: The Grolier Society, pp. 4097–105. Reprinted in Mehrling and Sandilands (1999), pp. 252–60.
Young, Allyn (1990), ‘Nicholas Kaldor’s notes on Allyn Young’s LSE lectures 1927–29’, Journal of Economic Studies, 17(3/4), pp. 18–114.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Chandra, R. (2020). Intellectual Influences on Allyn Young. In: Allyn Abbott Young. Great Thinkers in Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31981-6_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31981-6_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-31980-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-31981-6
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)