Richard F. Kahn (1905-1989)

Maria Cristina Marcuzzo and Annalisa Rosselli

Introduction

In his short autobiographical note (Kahn 1984), with characteristic modesty and sparing use of words, Richard Kahn set out the basic facts of his apparently unglamorous life, which was however rich in emotions, replete with academic honour, and burdened with many teaching and administrative responsibilities.

He was born on 10 August 1905, in London, son of a government inspector of schools; from 1918 to 1924 he attended St Paul’s School, London, and went on to study mathematics and physics at King’s College, Cambridge, achieving modest results in the Natural Sciences Tripos. Thus he fell short of qualification to enter the academic world, but the early disappointment turned into success. Since he still had a further year’s scholarship available, under the guidance of Gerald Shove and John Maynard Keynes he set about studying for the Economics Tripos, which he passed with brilliant results in June 1928. It is worth noting that the dissertation he wrote between October 1928 and

M.C. Marcuzzo (*)

Full Professor of Economics, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy e-mail: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

A. Rosselli (*)

Professor of the History of Economic Thought,

University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy e-mail: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

R.A. Cord (ed.), The Palgrave Companion to Cambridge Economics,

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-41233-1_31

December 1929 to obtain a Fellowship at King’s was also the happy outcome of initial failure—in this case to gain access to the Midland Bank’s monetary statistics, which Keynes thought could offer good material for his dissertation. Since the data could not be used, Kahn was allowed to choose his own subject. Under the influence of Marshall’s Principles, and following a suggestion by Shove and Piero Sraffa, he chose The Economics of the Short Period (Kahn 1989). The dissertation secured him election as a Fellow of King’s on 15 March 1930; with very few interruptions, notably during the Second World War and a sabbatical year in Geneva, Kahn spent all his life in his College, where he supervised students in economics from 1936 to 1951, having moved, after Keynes’s death, into his rooms. He died in Cambridge on 6 June 1989.

He was very active and influential in the Faculty of Economics and Politics at Cambridge, where he started as Lecturer in 1933, finally becoming Professor in 1951. He chaired many committees and masterminded academic activities and appointments. He had several administrative duties at King’s: in particular, he was appointed Second Bursar in 1935, and subsequently succeeded Keynes as First Bursar in 1946, also becoming executor of his will and trustee of his estate. In this capacity, he was responsible for the stock exchange portfolio of the Keynes Trust until Lydia Keynes’s death in 1981.

At the outbreak of the war, Kahn worked at the Board of Trade, where he was involved in the point-rationing scheme to curb consumption and free resources for the war effort; he then acted as Deputy Director of the Middle East Supply Centre in Cairo, where he was given many administrative duties. Subsequently, he moved on to the Ministry of Supply, where he started working on issues related to post-war organization of international economic institutions, and became Head of the General Division of the Board of Trade after the end of hostilities. From the late 1940s he worked for a number of international organizations (the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO)) and for various British Labour governments, for which he drew up incomes policy schemes. In the 1960s he served for three years as part-time member of the National Coal Board. He received a life peerage in 1964.

Starting in the early 1930s he invested in shares, bonds, and commodities with alternating fortunes. He was in charge of the finances of friends and relatives and devoted a considerable part of his time to the management of their savings. Unlike Keynes and Sraffa, with whom he frequently discussed financial matters, he made modest gains and did not die rich.

He was an enthusiastic mountaineer and even late in life would still spend most summers in the Alps. In all matters he was a careful planner, holidays included. He never married, but his lasting relationship with Joan Robinson was ever at the centre of his sentimental and intellectual life. He always remained very close to his family, particularly his three sisters, supporting them financially and emotionally. An important aspect of his life was his strong Jewish identity, even when he gave up religious practice, as testified by the fact that he wanted to be buried in the Jewish part of the Cambridge cemetery (Pasinetti 2007).

Kahn did not publish much, but his contributions are landmarks in the economics of the twentieth century. A complete bibliography can be found in Marcuzzo (1989). In the following pages we aim to offer a critical exposition of Kahn’s main contributions to our understanding of the working of the economic system by focusing on the aspects which best show his originality and innovative thought. He investigated a wide range of topics: employment, money, market structure, international trade, and systems of payments. He liked to approach a problem in general abstract terms but, when necessary, he was also interested in carefully reconstructing the details of the actual workings of the economy. He brought to his research in economics his strong logical powers, a perfectionism which came close to becoming an obstacle to publishing, a strong commitment to the public cause, and a love for the Cambridge way of life.

In the following sections we present Kahn’s scientific works under three headings: Employment, Liquidity, and the Fight Against the Quantity Theory of Money (Section 2); Markets and Prices: Superseding the Theory of Perfect Competition (Section 3); and Reforming International Economic Institutions (Section 4). Rather than following a strict chronological order, we have grouped Kahn’s contributions according to subject matter and followed the evolution of his thought within. The order and length of the sections reflect what we believe to be the level of their theoretical significance. Furthermore, in Section 5 we show Kahn as protagonist and champion of Cambridge economics, in close association with Keynes and Robinson. In the concluding section we draw on his parliamentary speeches to reveal the force of his commitment to the cause of full employment.