Лионель Роббинс: Жизнь и вклад в экономическую науку.

British economist (1898–1984)

Lionel Charles Robbins, Baron Robbins, (22 November 1898 – 15 May 1984) was a British economist, and prominent member of the economics department at the London School of Economics (LSE). He is known for his leadership at LSE, his proposed definition of economics, and for his instrumental efforts in shifting Anglo Saxon economics from its Marshallian direction. He is famous for the quote, "Humans want what they can't have."

Robbins was born in Sipson, west of London, the son of Rowland Richard Robbins (1872–1960), known as Dick, and his wife Rosa Marion Harris; his father was a farmer, a member of Middlesex County Council involved also in the National Farmers' Union, and the family was Strict Baptist. His sister Caroline became a noted Professor of History at Bryn Mawr College. Robbins was educated at home, at Hounslow College (a preparatory school) and at Southall County School. He went to University College London in October 1915, beginning an Arts degree and attending lectures by W. P. Ker, the medievalist Francis Charles Montague, and A. F. Pollard. Wishing to serve in World War I, he began training in early 1916 at Topsham, Devon. He was in the Royal Field Artillery as an officer from August 1916 to 1918, when he was wounded by a sniper on 12 April in the Battle of the Lys and returned home with the rank of lieutenant. During the war Robbins became interested in guild socialism, reading in G. D. H. Cole and by personal contact with Reginald Lawson, a connection from the Harris side of the family. Through Clive Gardiner, an artist commissioned by Dick Robbins in 1917 to paint his son's portrait, Robbins met first Alfred George Gardiner, Clive's father, and then his ally the activist James Joseph Mallon. After his convalescence and 1919 demobilisation from the army, Robbins was employed for about a year by the Labour Campaign for the Nationalization of the Drink Trade, a position found with Mallon's help. The campaign was an offshoot of the State Management Scheme set up during the war, and Robbins worked in Mecklenburgh Square, London for Mallon and Arthur Greenwood. In 1920, Robbins resumed studies at the London School of Economics (LSE), where he was taught by Harold Laski, Edwin Cannan and Hugh Dalton. He graduated B. Sc. (Econ) in 1923 with first class honours.

After graduation, Robbins found a six month position as a researcher for William Beveridge, via Dalton. It was a one year lecturing position, and he returned to LSE in 1925, again with Dalton's backing, as assistant lecturer, shortly becoming lecturer. Robbins refused to sign a draft by Keynes of proposals including tariffs and wanted the chance to submit a minority report. Keynes as chair would not grant the request, given that Robbins was in a minority of one. Robbins, who had compared the protectionist views to those of Lord Rothermere and Lord Beaverbrook, walked out of a meeting, and briefed Philip Snowden against the report that contained a version of his criticism, considered himself poorly treated. Bad feeling persisted for years between LSE and Cambridge economists. Initially, Robbins was opposed to Keynes's 1936 General Theory. His own 1934 treatise on the Great Depression is an analysis belonging to that period of his thought. Later, he accepted the need for government intervention.

Robbins joined the British government's Central Economic Information Service in summer 1940, from Cambridge to where the LSE had moved. The Service was split into the Central Statistical Office and the Economic Section, which Robbins headed as Director from September 1941. The points system devised in 1941 for rationing of clothing, footwear and household goods, by Robbins with Peggy Joseph and James Meade, is considered a successful policy. From 1942 Robbins worked largely on planning for post war reconstruction, with Meade. He represented the United Kingdom also at the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 and took part in the negotiation of the 1946 Anglo American loan. Over this period, he became fully reconciled with John Maynard Keynes.</blockquote>

The Robbins Report of 1963 advocated substantial expansion of higher education in the United Kingdom, taking the line, often called now the "Robbins principle", that demand from those suitably qualified should drive its development. There was background at the LSE for the view taken, in work of Richard Layard and Claus Moser, and it drew also on recent ideas of Jean Floud and A. H. Halsey. Robbins became the first Chancellor of the new University of Stirling in 1968. He also advocated major government support for the arts, as well as universities.

Robbins is noted as a free market economist, and for his definition of economics.

As an undergraduate, Robbins felt he had gained much from Philip Wicksteed's The Common Sense of Political Economy (1910). Within the earlier British tradition, he admired William Stanley Jevons's mastery of statistical evidence, and for theory which he thought had abiding relevance. Skidelsky takes Robbins to be a possible but in any case rare example of a British continuator of John Neville Keynes and his Scope and Method of Political Economy (1891). He corresponded with the American Frank Knight from 1931 until Knight's death in 1972.

Robbins was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the 1944 Birthday Honours. He was elected an International Member of the American Philosophical Society in 1955. On 16 June 1959 he was created a life peer as Baron Robbins, of Clare Market in the City of Westminster. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1966. In the 1968 New Year Honours he was appointed a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH). Robbins received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot Watt University in 1967. The Lionel Robbins Building at the London School of Economics is named after him. Since 2009 that building has had on the exterior of it an installation artwork, Blue Rain, by the American artist Michael Brown. There is also a Lionel Robbins Building at Nottingham Trent University.

On 2 August 1924, Robbins married Iris Elizabeth Harris Gardiner, one of the daughters of the journalist and editor Alfred George Gardiner. They had a daughter and a son; Ann and Richard. His daughter married Christopher Louis McIntosh Johnson in 1958. His son was an artist and sculptor; the LSE has a bust of Lionel Robbins which was made by his son.