LionelRobbins was a peculiar Englishman in the economics world of the 1920s for a very simple reason: he was not a Marshallian but rather a follower of Jevons and Wicksteed.
Robbins was initially opposed to Keynes's General Theory.
Indeed, Robbins always saw his L.S.E. as a bulwark against Cambridge, whether it was populated by Marshallians or Keynesians.
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Lionel Charles Robbins, Baron Robbins (1898 - 1984) was a British economist of the 20th century who proposed one of the early contemporary definitions of economics, "Economics is a science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses."
Robbins was a key influence in the development of economics at LSE during the 1930s, and his influence and involvement outside LSE was substantial.
From 1941-45 he was the Director of the Economic Section of the Offices of the War Cabinet, responsible for advising on the economic conduct of the war and for planning for the post-war period.
The Economic Section considered economic rules and institutions on an international level, and Robbins was a UK delegate to the 1943 Hot Springs and 1944 Bretton Woods conferences.
Robbins loved the discipline of economics itself, and the lectures reflect the gusto with which he had spent his life pursuing its mastery.
Robbins often makes asides in the lectures about the rarity of a particular text that he has brought to the lecture hall to read from that day, and he also talks about the many pamphlets and books that he helped to have reprinted through the London School of Economics or the Royal Economic Society.
Robbins tells his version of the approach to these desiderata from a unique perspective as he was, for instance, well read in the German Historicists (younger and older) and had a grasp of the Austrian literature that is rare among Anglo-American economists.
First is Robbins' famous all-encompassing definition of economics that is still used to define the subject today: "Economics is the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between given ends and scarce means which have alternative uses." Second is the bright line Robbins drew between positive and normative issues.
Robbins argued that the economist qua economist should be studying what is rather than what ought to be.
Robbins' third major thought was that economics is a system of logical deduction from first principles.
Lionel Charles Robbins, Baron Robbins (1898 - 1984) was a British economist of the 20th century who proposed one of the early contemporary definitions of economics, "Economics is a science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses."
As a result of his Jevonian, Lausanne, Austrian and Swedish influences, Lord Robbins was instrumental in shifting the train of Anglo-Saxon economics off its Marshallian rails and onto Continental ones.
