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David Gawen Champernowne (1912–2000)

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The Palgrave Companion to Cambridge Economics

Abstract

David Gawen Champernowne was one of the most gifted Cambridge mathematical economists, with important contributions in the field of economic statistics (measurement of income distribution and inequality, as well as work on probability, decision making, and estimation methods in economics), and in the form of enlightened commentaries on works by Maynard Keynes, John von Neumann, Joan Robinson, Nicholas Kaldor, and others. He loved behind-the-scenes refinement of ideas, from which A.C. Pigou, Dennis Robertson, Robinson, Kaldor, Piero Sraffa, and other Cambridge economists benefited. Champernowne held chairs at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities. His 1936 review essay questioned Keynes’s analysis of the dynamics of the labour market and introduced the role of price expectations in determining the equilibrium level of real wages and employment. In several works, starting with his 1936 Fellowship dissertation, Champernowne laid the foundations for the application of stochastic process models to interpreting income distributions. In the 1950s, he clearly discussed, for the first time in the economics literature, reswitching and capital-reversing phenomena in capital theory.

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References

Main Works by David Champernowne

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  • Champernowne, D.G. (1964). ‘Expectations and the Links Between the Economic Future and the Present’. In R. Lekachman (ed.) Keynes’ General Theory: Reports of Three Decades. New York: St. Martin’s Press: 174–202.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Full Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, Universidade de Brasilia, Brasilia, Brazil

    Mauro Boianovsky

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  1. Mauro Boianovsky
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Correspondence to Mauro Boianovsky .

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  1. Researcher in Economics, United Kingdom

    Robert A. Cord

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Boianovsky, M. (2017). David Gawen Champernowne (1912–2000). In: Cord, R. (eds) The Palgrave Companion to Cambridge Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-41233-1_34

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-41233-1_34

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