Profile Major Works Resources

Frank H. Hahn, 1925-2013

Photo of F.H.Hahn

Cambridge general equilibrium theorist.

The perennial renegade, Frank H. Hahn spent most of his professional life at Cambridge as virtually the sole Neo-Walrasian member of an ardently Keynesian department. Perhaps his socialization with the irascible critics of Neoclassical economics, such as Joan Robinson, imbibed in him a considerable degree of sobriety and skepticism towards the very Neoclassical economics in which he was a master.

Frank H. Hahn was born in Berlin, Germany.  The family moved to Prague in 1931, then to England in 1938, where Hahn completed his studies at Bournemouth school.  Hahn served as an RAF navigator during WWII, and, after the war, enrolled at the LSE to complete his studies. At LSE, Hahn came under the influence of John Hicks and Nicholas  Kaldor.  Hahn's Ph.D. thesis on income distribution, supervised by Kaldor, was very "Kaldorian"/Cambridge School, and yielded a couple of papers. (it was only published in full in 1972.

Hahn joined the faculty at the University of Birmingham in 1948, then a rising economics department.  Hahn credits his mathematically-oriented colleague at Birmingham, W.T. Gorman, as his greatest influence. Hahn soon shed his Kaldorian garb and emerged as a rising Neo-Walrasian general equilibrium theorist. He remained at Birmingham for ten years.  After a visiting year at MIT in 1959-60, Frank H. Hahn moved to Cambridge University, where he was elected fellow at the newly-created graduate-oriented Churchill College. At the time, the university was dominated by the Keynesian giants of the Cambridge School, like Joan Robinson, Richard F. Kahn and his old mentor Nicholas Kaldor.  Although Hahn's embrace of the Neo-Walrasian research program was ideologically at odds with the Cambridge approach, their interaction was intellectually stimulating and challenging for both.

Frank Hahn moved back to the LSE in 1967, as professor of economics, and was joined there by Gorman.  They reorganized the LSE department on more modern lines, and brought in Michio Morishima and Amartya Sen.  In 1972, Hahn moved back to Cambridge, but the old giants had now gone into retirement, and the atmosphere become more fractious and political.  In 1976, Hahn brought in a substantial fifteen-year grant from ESRC, and used it to bring in a  steady stream of researchers interested in combining general equilibrium theory, uncertainty theory and monetary theory.  The "missing markets" research program virtually grew out of Hahn's Cambridge seminar.  

Frank H. Hahn viewed the Neo-Walrasian research programme without illusions - remaining one of its most ardent and articulate defenders but, unique among Neoclassical economists, also acknowledging and stressing its limits clearly. (e.g. 1970, 1973, 1974, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1985)  Nonetheless Hahn remained an critic of all systems -  Monetarist, New Classical, Neo-Ricardian, Post Keynesian, all. But he was not a dogmatic nihilist: if his methodological position could be summed up in a phrase, it would might be "let a hundred flowers bloom - but take none too seriously."

His positive contributions are many: his work can be more-or-less divided into concerns over general equilibrium (1971), the tatonnement and non-tatonnement stability of multi-market equilibrium (1958, 1962, 1970, 1982), the theory of money in sequence economies (1965, 1971, 1973),  the theory of economic growth with heterogeneous stores of value (1966, 1968, 1969, 1973), conjectural equilibria (1977) and combining all these with each other.

Frank H. Hahn retired from Cambridge in 1992, and took up an appointment at the University of Siena, Italy.  He continued there until 2000, then retired in Cambridge.   Hahn passed away on 29 January, 2013.

 

  


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Major Works of Frank H. Hahn

  • "The Share of Wages in the Trade Cycle", 1950, EJ
  • "The Share of Wages in National Income", 1951, Oxford EP
  • "The Rate of Interest in General Equilibrium Analysis", 1955, EJ.
  • "Gross Substitutes and the Dynamic Stability of General Equilibrium", 1958, Econometrica.
  • "The Patinkin Controversy", 1960, RES
  • "The Stability of Growth Equilibrium", 1960, QJE
  • "Money, Dynamic Stability and Growth", 1961, Metroeconomica
  • "A Stable Adjustment Process for a Competitive Economy", 1962, RES.
  • "A Theorem on Non-Tatonnement Stability" with T.Negishi, 1962, Econometrica.
  • "On the Stability of a Pure Exchange Equilibrium", 1962, IER.
  • "The Stability of the Cournot Oligopoly Solution", 1962, RES
  • "On the Disequilibrium Behavior of a Multi-Sectoral Growth Model", 1963, EJ
  • "The Theory of Economic Growth: A survey", with R.C.O.Matthews, 1964, EJ.
  • "On Some Problems of Proving the Existence of an Equilibrium in a Monetary Economy", 1965, in Hahn and Brechling, editors, Theory of Interest Rates.
  • "Equilibrium Dynamics with Heterogeneous Capital Goods", 1966, QJE
  • "On Warranted Growth Paths", 1968, RES.
  • "On Money and Growth", 1969, JMCB.
  • "Some Adjustment Problems", 1970, Econometrica.
  • General Competitive Analysis, with K.J. Arrow, 1971.
  • "Equilibrium with Transactions Costs", 1971, Econometrica.
  • The Share of Wages in the National Income: An inquiry into the theory of distribution, 1972
  • "The Winter of Our Discontent", 1973, Economica.
  • "On Some Equilibrium Growth Paths", 1973, in Mirrlees and Stern, editors, Models of Economic Growth.
  • "On Transactions Costs, Inessential Sequence Economics and Money", 1973, RES.
  • On the Notion of Equilibrium in Economics, 1974.
  • "Revival of Political Economy: The wrong issues and the wrong arguments", 1975, Economic Record
  • "Exercises in Conjectural Equlibria", 1977, Scand JE [pdf]
  • "Keynesian Economics and General Equilibrium Theory: Reflections on some current debates", 1977, in Harcourt, editor, Microeconomic Foundations of Macroeconomics.
  • "Monetarism and Economic Theory", 1980, Economica
  • "General Equilibrium Theory", 1981, in Bell and Kristol, editors, Crisis in Economic Theory
  • Money and Inflation, 1982.
  • "Reflections on the Invisible Hand", 1982, Lloyd's Bank Review.
  • "The Neo-Ricardians", 1982, Cambridge JE.
  • "Stability", 1982, in Arrow and Intriligator, editors, Handbook of Mathematical Econ. - intro
  • "Why I am Not a Monetarist", in Hahn, 1984.
  • Equilibrium and Macroeconomics, 1984.
  • "In Praise of Economic Theory", in Hahn, 1985.
  • Money, Growth and Stability, 1985.
  • Editor, Handbook of Monetary Economics, I - II. with B. Friedman, 1990 - intro & contents
  • "Liquidity", 1988, in Friedman and Hahn, 1990, Handbook of Monetary Economics - intro
  • "An Intellectual Retrospect", 1994, BNLQR [pdf]
  • Critical Essay on Modern Macroeconomic Theory, with R.M. Solow, 1995.
  • "Rerum Cognoscere Causas", 1996, Econ & Philosphy
  • "A Remark on Incomplete Market Equilibrium", 1999, in Chichilnisky, editor, Markets, Information and Uncertainty.
  • "Notes on Sequence Economies, Transaction Costs and Uncertainty", with K.J. Arrow , 1999, JET
  • "The Dichotomy Once Again", 2002, EJHET
  • "Tribute to Michio Morishima", 2004 [pdf]

 


HET

 

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Resources on Frank Hahn

  • Citation on induction into NAS (1988)
  • Hahn Profile at Elsevier/North-Holland
  • F.H. Hahn Page at LSE History
  • F.H. Hahn obituary by Partha Dasgupta, at RES
  • Wikipedia
  • Frank Hahn obituary notice at Marginal Revolution blog
  • Frank H. Hahn at repec

 

 
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