Cassel, Gustav (1866–1944)

Abstract

Along with Knut Wicksell and David Davidson, Gustaf Cassel was the founder of modern economics in Sweden. He started as a mathematician and began his career as an economist by treating problems of railway rates and progressive taxation from a mathematical point of view. In order to deepen his understanding of economics he went to Germany, where he attended the seminars of Schönberg, Cohn and other traditional representatives of the economic profession. After visits to England, where he made the acquaintance of Marshall and of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, and a short period of lecturing at the university of Copenhagen, in 1902 Cassel took up a position as associate professor in economics at the university of Stockholm. In 1904 he was appointed a professor in economics and public finance. As holder of the chair he acquired a series of gifted pupils, Gunnar Myrdal and Bertil Ohlin among others, who, although they developed the theoretical heritage of Wicksell rather than that of Cassel, became the founders of the Stockholm School of economics. Before the First World War Cassel frequently served as a government expert on problems of railway rates, taxation, state budgets and banking and his involvement in problems of economic policy increased with the post-war economic problems. During the 1920s he became an adviser to the League of Nations on monetary problems and was commonly regarded as a leading international authority in this field, lecturing and publishing widely. All his life he worked also as a columnist for the Swedish daily paper Svenska Dagbladet. Although Cassel was originally liberal, he progressively turned more and more conservative denouncing the labour movement, the welfare state and Keynesianism in the name of ‘Modern Scientific Principles’.