Profile Major Works Resources

Richard M. Goodwin, 1913-1996

Photo of R.M. Goodwin, from Siena

 Born in Newcastle, Indiana, to a lawyer-turned-banking family.   Although an artist by inclination, Goodwin enrolled at Harvard  in 1930 in the expectation of studying law and pursuing a career in his grandfather's bank.  However, the Goodwin family business was financially ruined during the Great Depression.  Seeking to understand the course of events, Goodwin switched to economics and eventually wrote his BA thesis on Marxism.  Goodwin proceeded to Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship to St. John's, but by his own recollection,  it was a not a particularly fruitful time.  He returned to the US in 1937, to pursue graduate studies at Harvard, and came under the spell of Joseph Schumpeter.  Goodwin obtained his Ph.D at Harvard in 1941, but had already been appointed instructor in economics in 1939.  During the war, with the absence of teachers, Goodwin was drafted to teach physics at Harvard. 

Goodwin was appointed assistant professor of economics at Harvard in 1945.  By this time, Goodwin had begun his lifelong interest in the malfunctioning of capitalism and business cycles, constructing formal mathematical models, at first inspired by physics, later more by biology (notably adopting Volterra's predator-prey models for Goodwin's famous 1967 class struggle model). Goodwin was a pioneer in the development of endogenous cycles via non-linear dynamic models. Goodwin's theoretical outlook that can be described as a combination between Marxism and Keynesianism. 

Denied tenure at the beginning of the McCarthy era, Goodwin left Harvard in 1949, and joined Cambridge University, at the invitation of Richard Stone, initially on a Rockefeller foundation grant.  He  would stay there, remaining a teacher at Cambridge from 1952 until 1980, when he became a professor at the University of Siena, Italy, until his retirement in 1984

Goodwin was also an accomplished artist and painter.  Anecdotes from his students report a an admiration for the way Goodwin could whip up beautiful, complex three-dimensional diagrams on the blackboard in an instant, which they they could only clumsily replicate in their notebooks.   

 

  

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Major works of Richard M. Goodwin

  • "Multiplier Effects of a Balanced Budget, Notes", 1946, Econometrica [cwls]
  • "Innovations and the Irregularity of Economics Cycles", 1946, REStat
  • "The Multiplier", 1947, in Harris, editor, New Economics
  • "Dynamic Coupling with Especial Reference to Markets Having Production Lags", 1947, Econometrica.
  • "Secular and Cyclical Aspects of the Multiplier and the Accelerator", 1948, in Metzler, editor, Income, Employment and Public Policy
  • "The Business Cycle as a Self-Sustaining Oscillation", 1949, Econometrica
  • "The Multiplier as a Matrix", 1949, EJ
  • "A Nonlinear Theory of the Cycle", 1950, RES
  • "Does the Matrix Multiplier Oscillate?", 1950, EJ
  • "The Nonlinear Accelerator and the Persistence of Business Cycles", 1951, Econometrica
  • "Econometrics in Business-Cycle Analysis", 1951, in A.H. Hansen, Business Cycles and National Income
  • "Iteration, Automatic Computers and Economic Dynamics", 1951, Metroec
  • "The Problem of Trend and Cycle", 1953, Yorkshire Bulletin of Economic and Social Research
  • "Static and Dynamic Linear General Equilibrium Models", 1953, in Netherlands Econ Institute, Input-Output Relations
  • "A Model of Cyclical Growth", 1955, in Lundberg, editor, Business Cycle in the Postwar World
  • "The Optimal Growth Path for an Underdeveloped Economy", 1961, EJ
  • "A Growth Cycle", 1967, in Feinstein, editor, Socialism, Capitalism and Economic Growth
  • Elementary Economics from the Higher Standpoint, 1970.
  • "A Growth Cycle", 1972, in E.K. Hunt and J.G. Schwatz, editors, A Critique of Economic Theory
  • Essays in Economic Dynamics, 1982.
  • Essays in Linear Economic Structures, 1983.
  • "A Note on Wage, Profits and Fluctuating Growth Rate", 1983, Cambridge JE
  • "Disaggregating Models of Fluctuating Growth", 1984, in Goodwin et al., editors, Non-linear Models of Fluctuating Growth
  • "A Personal Perspective on Mathematical Economics", 1985, BNLQR
  • "Swinging Along the Turnpike with von Neumann and Sraffa", 1986, Cambridge JE
  • The Dynamics of a Capitalist Economy: A multi-sectoral approach, with L.F. Punzo, 1987.
  • "The Multiplier-Accelerator Discretely Revisited", 1988, in Ricci and Vellupilai, editors, Growth cycles and multisectoral economics, the Goodwin tradition.
  • "Swinging Along the Autostrada: Cyclical fluctuations along the von Neumann Ray", 1989, in Dore et al., John von Neumann and Modern Economics.
  • Essays in Nonlinear Economic Dynamics, 1989.
  • Chaotic Economic Dynamics, 1990.
  • "Schumpeter, Keynes and the Theory of Economic Evolution", 1991, J of Evol Econ
  • "Nonlinear Dynamics and Economic Evolution", 1991, in Thygsen et al., editors, Business Cycles

Resources on Richard Goodwin

 
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Resources on Richard Goodwin

 

 
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