Jacob Viner

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Jacob Viner (May 3, 1892 - September 12, 1970), a noted economist, was born in Montreal, Canada, and did his undergraduate work at McGill University. He earned his Ph.D. at Harvard University, where he wrote his dissertation under Frank W. Taussig, the international trade economist. He was a professor at the University of Chicago from 1916 to 1917 and from 1919 to 1946. At various times he taught also at Stanford and Yale Universities and went twice to the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Geneva Switzerland. In 1946 he left for Princeton University, where he remained until his retirement in 1960.

He is noted for a wide range of contributions to many areas of economics. He developed the basic model of the firm, devising the long- and short-run cost curves that are still a staple. He also introduced the terms trade creation and trade diversion in 1950.

Viner was a noted opponent of John Maynard Keynes during the Great Depression. While he agreed with the policies of government spending that Keynes pushed for, Viner argued that Keynes's analysis was flawed and would not stand in the long run.

He also made important contributions to the theory of international trade and to the history of economic thought. While he was at Chicago, Viner co-edited the Journal of Political Economy with Frank Knight.

Viner played a role in government, most notably as an advisor to Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau during the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration.

At both Chicago and Princeton, Viner had a reputation as being one of the toughest professors, and many students were terrified by the prospect of studying under him. To his friends and family, however, he was known to be wise, witty and kind. Nobel laureate Milton Friedman studied under Viner while attending the University of Chicago.

[edit] Major publications

"Some Problems of Logical Method in Political Economy", 1917, JPE
"Price Policies: the determination of market price", 1921.
Dumping: A problem in international trade, 1923.
Canada's Balance of International Indebtedness: 1900- 1913, 1924.
"The Utility Concept in Value Theory and its Critics", 1925, JPE.
"Adam Smith and Laissez-Faire", 1927, JPE
"The Present Status and Future Prospects of Quantitative Economics", 1928, AER
"Mills' Behavior of Prices", 1929, QJE
"Costs Curves and Supply Curve", 1931, ZfN.
"The Doctrine of Comparative Costs", 1932, WWA
"Inflation as a Possible Remedy for the Depression", 1933, Proceedings of Institute of Public Affairs, Univ. of Georgia
"Mr. Keynes and the Causes of Unemployment", 1936, QJE.
Studies in the Theory of International Trade, 1937.
"Marshall's Economics, in Relation to the Man and to his Times", 1941, AER
Trade Relations Between Free-Market and Controlled Economies, 1943.
"International Relations between State-Controlled National Economies", 1944, AER.
"Prospects for Foreign Trade in the Post-War World", 1946, Manchester Statistical Society.
"Power Versus Plenty as Objectives of Foreign Policy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries", 1948, World Politics
"Bentham and J.S. Mill: the Utilitarian Background", 1949, AER
The Customs Union Issue, 1950.
"A Modest Proposal for Some Stress on Scholarship in Graduate Training", 1950 (reprinted in 1991)
International Economics, 1951.
International Trade and Economic Development, 1952.
"Review of Schumpeter's History of Economic Analysis", 1954, AER
"`Fashion' in Economic Thought", 1957, Report of 6th Conference of Princeton Graduate Alumni
"International Trade Theory and its Present-Day Relevance", 1955, Economics and Public Policy
The Long View and the Short: Studies in economic theory, 1958.
"Stability and Progress: the poorer countries' problem", 1958, in Hague, editor, Stability and Progress in the World Economy
Five Lectures on Economics and Freedom, 1959 (Wabash Lectures, publ. 1991)
"The Intellectual History of Laissez-Faire", 1960, J Law Econ
"Hayek on Freedom and Coercion", 1960, Southern EJ
"Relative Abundance of the Factors and International Trade", 1962, Indian EJ
"The Necessary and Desirable Range of Discretion to be Allowed to a Monetary Authority", 1962, in Yeager, editor, In Search of a Monetary Constitution
"Progressive Individualism as Original Sin", 1963, Canadian J of Econ & Poli Sci
"The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill", 1963, Univ of Toronto Quarterly
"The Economist in History", 1963, AER
"The United States as a Welfare State", 1963, in Higgenbotham, editor, Man, Science, Learning and Education
Problems of Monetary Control, 1964.
"Comment on my 1936 Review of Keynes", 1964, in Lekachman, editor, Keynes's General Theory
"Introduction", in J. Rae, Life of Adam Smith, 1965.
"Adam Smith", 1968, in Sills, editor, International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences
"Mercantilist Thought", 1968, in Sills, editor, International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences
"Man's Economic Status", 1968, in Clifford, editor, Man Versus Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain.
"Satire and Economics in the Augustan Age of Satire", 1970, in Miller et al, editors, The Augustan Milieu
The Role of Providence in the Social Order, 1972.
Religious Thought and Economic Society, 1978.
Essays on the Intellectual History of Economics, 1991.