Contemporaries' Impressions and Evaluations of Austin

Austin had a long life, he worked extraordinarily hard, and was associated with a breathtaking number of institutions in academia, government, and internationally. Of all these institutions he was, in his own words, a willing ‘slave’. As with many of his generation, he found delegation difficult and this caused clashes and misunderstandings, sometimes leaving Austin feeling hurt and unappreciated by other officers of the organisations for which he worked so hard and, overall, served so well.

For the Memoir of Austin which I wrote for the Proceedings of the British Academy (Harcourt 1997), I asked a selection of people from these and other institutions for their impressions and evaluations. What emerged is the respect and affection in which he was held in so many spheres: respect for his outstanding abilities, affection for him as a person even though his stature and personality were such that I do not think the persons concerned felt they were able to get really close to him, much as they may have wished to. I quote below from their responses.

Robin Matthews worked closely with Austin in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s in the Faculty and also on the Economic Journal when Matthews was Review Editor. He singled out (6 March 1994) Austin’s contributions to economics, emphasising the range of topics to which he made original contributions. Though Austin did not keep up to date with the literature, he ‘had a knack of identifying what was important’. He concluded that Austin was a most serious and optimistic economist who ‘believed that economics was capable of doing good’.

Frank Hahn’s views (6 June 1994) are complementary to those of Matthews:

Austin was a born ‘mandarin”.. .impatient of theory which abstracted from the “real world”. His aim was to improve the world whether it was the small world of Cambridge, the Indian subcontinent or the Royal Economic Society. His memoranda. were perfect instances of what such writings should be: lucid, precise and brief.

Austin was socially a cut above many of his more recent colleagues. He had enormous self-confidence, and spoke in upper-class Cambridge English. He was also apt to favour those he knew—especially in Cambridge—when it came to jobs and honours. This was not really a sign of the “old school tie” syndrome. He simply took it for granted that the best minds, and indeed the morally most reliable minds, were to be found in Cambridge. After that he would allow some merit to Oxford and London, but not much beyond that ... [A] failing, but one found it hard to blame him for being faithful to beliefs formed when England and its Universities were very different from what they are now.

Austin was long associated with the NIESR. Two former Directors, Bryan Hopkin and David Worswick, recollected Austin’s role there and much else besides. Worswick tells an amusing tale of how, at Robert Hall’s prompting, he concocted a 70-and-over rule to rid the Executive Committee of Austin and one other ‘old man’ (which soon took off Hall himself). To their credit, ‘both departed gracefully.. .without enquiring too closely into the origin of the rule’.

Hopkin (5 June 1994) reported on Austin’s massive contributions during Hopkins time as Director (1952-1957). Austin ‘took a detailed interest in all the work.. .going on, [gave] wise and informed counsel’ and personal support to Hopkin. Austin was the ideal person to fill such a role because he knew and was respected by so many people, he criticised work incisively but gently, and was well behaved even in the most difficult circumstances.

What of American evaluations? When President of the IEA, Paul Samuelson ‘was most content to have [Austin] run me and all in sight’ (7 July 1994). He thought that, as an economist, Austin was original and lucid, that he had good judgement which was not affected by dislike or personality. He considered it remarkable that he ‘never heard [Austin] utter a sour criticism of any of the Cambridge menagerie’. Bob Solow (7 June 1994) praised Austin’s role in the IEA, highlighting the length of the conferences under Austin’s guidance, which enabled serious discussion of papers, and that Austin’s force of character made sure that authors wrote the papers that the conference needed. Solow liked Austin, not least for his plain speaking, which contrasted with ‘[a] lot of Cambridge conversation [which struck Solow] as a move in a game (whose rules and objectives [he did not] know)’.

I have tried to give due weight to Austin’s contribution to development economics. Esra Bennathan knew of these at first hand. In a letter of 18 July 1992 to Cairncross, Bennathan mentions that after being interviewed by Austin for the civil service in 1961 he discovered that an ‘admired colleague’ at Birmingham regarded ‘Austin with the utmost suspicion, a dangerous figure of the Establishment, a duplicitous nature hiding behind an ascetic and saintly face’. Bennathan’s long experience of Austin was ‘totally different’. His lengthy letter is concerned not only with Austin’s crucial gifts as an economist but also with his practical Christianity, especially in helping academics in what became Bangladesh both to escape persecution and to build up their libraries and laboratories.

Bennathan summed up his idea of Austin’s ‘private and instinctive’ approach to development issues: ‘[Austin] work[ed] through and for people ... [He]. measure[ed] his effectiveness by his effect upon them, their actions and their progress ... [Austin] nurture[ed], encourage[ed] and sponsored those he [thought] promising, without expecting too much’.

I.G. Patel (5 July 1955) knew Austin as a supervisor (1946-1949) and then ‘in many capacities’—visits to India (sometimes as a family guest), IEA conferences, consultant to UNDP, Council of the RES. His first impression was ‘of a very generous and rather shy and self-effacing person’; his final summing up: ‘Generous, self-effacing and deeply committed’.

Hans Singer (4 October 1994) also paid tribute to Austin’s generosity and first-rate intelligence. Austin was the secretary of ‘a small committee at Cambridge’ set up in the early 1930s to help two German refugee students of whom Singer was one. Though not Singer’s PhD supervisor, Austin gave him ‘invariably helpful’ advice on some problems in his dissertation. Austin’s ‘empirical approach and clear language were a great help to a new arrival, bewildered.Thy the incomprehensible lectures and papers by Wittgenstein and Piero Sraffa [as well] by the intricacies of liquidity preference’. Always ‘young Singer’ to Austin, ‘up to shortly before his death people.from Cambridge [carried] greetings from [Austin] to “young Singer”’.

I conclude with Susan Howson (3 October 1994): ‘I have a great admiration, as well as love, for Austin, who always struck me as one of the most sane members of our profession’.