Sir Dennis Holme Robertson (23 May 1890 – 21 April 1963) was an English economist who taught at Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

 and London

University of London

-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...

 Universities.

Robertson, the son of a Church of England

Church of England

The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...

 clergyman, was born in Lowestoft

Lowestoft

Lowestoft is a town in the English county of Suffolk. The town is on the North Sea coast and is the most easterly point of the United Kingdom. It is north-east of London, north-east of Ipswich and south-east of Norwich...

 and educated as a scholar of Eton

Eton College

Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....

 and at Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...

, where he read Classics and Economics, graduating in 1912.

Robertson worked closely with John Maynard Keynes

John Maynard Keynes

John Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes of Tilton, CB FBA , was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments...

 in the 1920s and 1930s, during the years when Keynes was developing many of the ideas that later were incorporated in his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Keynes wrote that at that time, working with Robertson, it was good to work with someone who had a "completely first class mind". Ultimately however, differences of temperament and views about economic theory and practice (especially in the 1937 debate over the savings-investment relationship in the General Theory) led to some estrangement between the two men.

Robertson died of a heart attack at Cambridge on April 21, 1963.

Main publications

• A Study of Industrial Fluctuations, 1915.
• "Economic Incentive", 1921, Economica.
• Money, 1922.
• The Control of Industry, 1923.
• "Those Empty Boxes", 1924, EJ.
• Banking Policy and the Price Level, 1926.
• "Increasing Returns and the Representative Firm", 1930, EJ.
• Economic Fragments, 1931.
• "Saving and Hoarding", 1933, EJ.
• "Some Notes on Mr Keynes's "General Theory of Employment"", 1936, QJE.
• "Alternative Theories of the Rate of Interest", 1937, EJ.
• "Mr Keynes and Finance: A note", 1938, EJ.
• "Mr. Keynes and the Rate of Interest", 1940, in Essays in Monetary Theory
• Essays in Monetary Theory, 1940.
• "Wage Grumbles", 1949 in Readings in the Theory of Income Distribution.
• Utility and All That, 1952.
• Britain in the World Economy, 1954.
• Economic Commentaries, 1956.
• Lectures on Economic Principles, 1957-9.
• Growth, Wages, Money, 1961.
• Essays in Money and Interest, 1966

Secondary sources

• Gordon Fletcher (2000), Understanding Dennis Robertson: The Man and His Work.
• J.R. Presley (1979), Robertsonian Economics.
• Ben B. Seligman (1962), Main Currents in Modern Economics: Economic Thought since 1870.

External links

• New School: Dennis Robertson