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Sir Roy F. Harrod, 1900-1978
Roy Forbes Harrod taught economics, and produced his original contributions to
the subject, at Oxford between 1924 and his retirement in 1967. Elected to a Lectureship at Christ Church
Oxford in 1922, he then spent a few months at Cambridge with J.M. Keynes,
with whom he remained in close touch for the rest of Keynes' life, and whose official
biography he
published in 1951.
With Hicks and Meade he was among the
Oxford economists included in Keynes' circle of
correspondents. A founder of the Oxford Economics Research Group along with Hubert
Henderson and others, his unique contribution
in urging a "dynamic" rather than "static" approach to economic issues
was an Oxford contribution, accepted only later among the Cambridge economists.
A delay of two years, (1928 to 1930) in the publication by Keynes, then editor of the Economic
Journal of Harrod's original "marginal revenue curve" denied the Oxford
economist the primacy in this field. This sad turn of circumstance was to repeat
itself several times in Harrod's career. Another independent discovery by Harrod (1931),
effectively the long-run envelope of short-run average cost curves, also went unrecognized
- the credit being awarded to Viner. In that same article, he laid
out the analytical foundations for the theory of imperfect
competition - but Joan Robinson took the prize. The laurels
for his remarkable multiplier-accelerator
model, developed in his Trade Cycle (1936), were given to the
mathematically-expressed versions by Samuelson and Hicks. The equations of the IS-LM model were written down by Harrod
(1937), but the (later) drawing of the diagram by Hicks robbed him of his claims to
precedence. His 1939 paper on entrepreneurial behavior - one of the first statements of
the idea that there are natural selection or "evolutionary" mechanisms towards profit-maximizing behavior - was largely ignored
and left for Alchian (1950) to propose.
Finally, another discovery gave him some name recognition: Harrod's (1939) "Essay in
Dynamic Theory". The idea, which marked the beginning of the modern theory of growth, had been followed up by
Evsey Domar, but at least he got his name on the model this time:
the "Harrod-Domar Model". In his 1948 book, Towards a Dynamic
Economics, as well as in a series of essays (1960, 1963, 1975) he developed this further, highlighting the instability
problem of this model and launching the entire post-war research program on economic growth - and, indeed, reviving business cycle theory as well.
His contributions to international trade (1933, 1958) and imperfect competition (1933,
1934, 1952) have also been given latter-day recognition. His less rigorous pieces on
economic policy (1963, 1965, 1968, 1969) were also remarkable. He was appointed a Reader
in Economics at Nuffield College, Oxford in 1952, and is remembered in a Fellowship in
Applied Economics at that College.
Outside economic theory Harrod's claim to prominence was his work on inductive logic
(1956), his role on the Statistical Staff and as personal adviser to Winston Churchill
during WW II, and his unofficial advice to Harold MacMillan as Prime Minister. He
also devoted great energy to the life of his Oxford college.
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