G. L. S. Shackle
Encyclopedia
George Lennox Sharman Shackle (14 July 1903 – 3 March 1992) was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 economist
Economist
An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...

. He made a practical attempt to challenge classical rational choice theory
Rational choice theory
Rational choice theory, also known as choice theory or rational action theory, is a framework for understanding and often formally modeling social and economic behavior. It is the main theoretical paradigm in the currently-dominant school of microeconomics...

 and has been characterised as a "post-Keynesian
Post-Keynesian economics
Post Keynesian economics is a school of economic thought with its origins in The General Theory of John Maynard Keynes, although its subsequent development was influenced to a large degree by Michał Kalecki, Joan Robinson, Nicholas Kaldor and Paul Davidson...

," though he is influenced as well by Austrian economics; he has been described as drawing "Keynesian conclusions from Austrian premises." Much of his work is associated with the Dempster–Shafer theory of evidence.

Life

Born in Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

, his father was a mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

 teacher who had coached 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...

 to an 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"....

 scholarship
Scholarship
A scholarship is an award of financial aid for a student to further education. Scholarships are awarded on various criteria usually reflecting the values and purposes of the donor or founder of the award.-Types:...

. Shackle attended The Perse School but his parents could not afford to support him through university so he started work as a bank clerk. Later becoming a teacher, he studied in his own time for a University of 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...

 B.A.
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

 degree which he took in 1931. He started work on a Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

 under the supervision of Friedrich Hayek
Friedrich Hayek
Friedrich August Hayek CH , born in Austria-Hungary as Friedrich August von Hayek, was an economist and philosopher best known for his defense of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialist and collectivist thought...

 at the LSE
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...

 but switched to an interpretation of Keynes's General Theory of Employment Interest and Money
General Theory of Employment Interest and Money
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money was written by the English economist John Maynard Keynes. The book, generally considered to be his magnum opus, is largely credited with creating the terminology and shape of modern macroeconomics...

. He obtained his doctorate in 1937.

Following a number of academic posts, at the outbreak of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 in 1939, Shackle was appointed to S-Branch, Sir Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...

's inner office of economists. There he served along with Donald MacDougall
Donald MacDougall
Sir George Donald Alastair MacDougall was a Scottish economist and civil servant who held enormous influence over public policy during the 1960s...

 and Helen Makower
Helen Makower
Helen Makower was a British economist. Graduating from Newnham College, Cambridge Helen Makower (* 1 June 1910 London; † 17 May 1998 Marlborough, Wiltshire) was a British economist. Graduating from Newnham College, Cambridge Helen Makower (* 1 June 1910 London; † 17 May 1998 Marlborough,...

 under the leadership of Frederick Lindemann.

Following the war, a short spell at the Cabinet Office
Cabinet Office
The Cabinet Office is a department of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for supporting the Prime Minister and Cabinet of the United Kingdom....

 under James Meade
James Meade
James Edward Meade CB, FBA was a British economist and winner of the 1977 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences jointly with the Swedish economist Bertil Ohlin for their "Pathbreaking contribution to the theory of international trade and international capital movements."Meade was born in...

 and at the University of Leeds
University of Leeds
The University of Leeds is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England...

 led to appointment as professor of economics at the University of Liverpool
University of Liverpool
The University of Liverpool is a teaching and research university in the city of Liverpool, England. It is a member of the Russell Group of large research-intensive universities and the N8 Group for research collaboration. Founded in 1881 , it is also one of the six original "red brick" civic...

, a post he held until his retirement in 1969.

Work

Shackle was influenced by Keynes and Gunnar Myrdal
Gunnar Myrdal
Karl Gunnar Myrdal was a Swedish Nobel Laureate economist, sociologist, and politician. In 1974, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Friedrich Hayek for "their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the...

 and challenged the conventional role of probability
Probability
Probability is ordinarily used to describe an attitude of mind towards some proposition of whose truth we arenot certain. The proposition of interest is usually of the form "Will a specific event occur?" The attitude of mind is of the form "How certain are we that the event will occur?" The...

 in economics, contending that it failed adequately to deal with "surprising" events. The grounds of his thinking can be seen in Keynes's remark:
Though technical in nature, Shackle's work took economics into novel territory such as the importance of imagination
Imagination
Imagination, also called the faculty of imagining, is the ability of forming mental images, sensations and concepts, in a moment when they are not perceived through sight, hearing or other senses...

 in economic decisions to assess the plausibility of alternative outcomes. Though Shackle's work has had a limited impact on mainstream thought within economics, it continues (perhaps increasingly) to attract interest.

Shackle has also made important contributions to the history of economic thought
History of economic thought
The history of economic thought deals with different thinkers and theories in the subject that became political economy and economics from the ancient world to the present day...

, especially with regard to twentieth century economic schools of thought.

Others commenting on Shackle

In 'The Black Swan', Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes about Shackle (emphasis added):

Hayek is one of the rare celebrated members of his "profession" (along with J. M. Keynes and G.L.S. Shackle) to focus on true uncertainty, on the limitations of knowledge, on the unread books in Eco's library.

[...]

Tragically, before the proliferation of empirically blind idiot savants, interesting work had been begun by true thinkers, the likes of J. M. Keynes, Friedrich Hayek, and the great Benoit Mandelbrot, all of whom were displaced because they moved economics away from the precision of second-rate physics. Very sad. One great underestimated thinker is G.L.S. Shackle, now almost completely obscure, who introduced the notion of "unknowledge", that is, the unread books in Umberto Eco's library. It is unusual to see Shackle's work mentioned at all, and I had to buy his books from secondhand dealers in London.

By Shackle

  • Shackle, G.L.S (1938) Expectations, Investment and Income
  • - (1983). "The Bounds of Unknowledge". In J. Wiseman (ed), Beyond positive economics. New York: St. Martin's Press.

About Shackle


External links

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