Jim Thomas

The London School of Economics and Political Science | LSE · Department of Economics

Henry Schultz was an econometric pioneer in the statistical analysis of demand curves. If he had not been killed in a car crash at the age of 45, he would probably have played a leading role in the development of the Cowles Commission at the University of Chicago. This chapter examines his life and various contributions.

This is a survey (with extensive quotations) from the writings of eight LSE economists who fought in World Wars I and II and wrote about their experienes.

Given Lionel Robbins’s strong scepticism about the value of statistical analysis in economics, it is not surprising that early developments in Econometrics at LSE came from members of the Statistics Department at the School. However, Victor Edelberg, a graduate student in the Economics Department at LSE in the 1930s, published the second article in...

Given Lionel Robbins’s scepticism about the value of regression analysis, early LSE contributions to econometrics came from members of the Statistics Department, such as Arthur Bowley and Roy Allen. Much later, with the arrival of Bill Phillips, Rex Bergstrom, Denis Sargan and the graduate students he trained, the School developed the leading econo...

Economica was launched in 1921 as an LSE house journal to cover all aspects of work at the School and in its early years, LSE contributions dominated. In 1934, Politica was launched. Economica would now concentrate on economics, economic history, accounting and statistics, while Politica would cover the remaining subject areas. Economica was involv...

Although Roy Allen was officially a member of the Statistics Department at LSE, he made many important contributions to economic theory in the 1930s, including joint articles with John Hicks. He became a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 1935 and taught courses in econometrics at LSE from 1935 to 1940 and again in 1947 and 1948. His 1938 Mathema...

In 1933, Ragnar Frisch explained that econometrics involved the coordination of (i) economic theory, (ii) statistical data, and (iii) the appropriate quantitative methods of analysis. These quantitative methods of analysis cover a wider range of techniques than that conventionally covered in textbooks on econometrics. This chapter provides an histo...

An examination of some contributions to the analysis of immigration by a number of writers with LSE connections.

This paper discusses Ronald Coase's experience, both as a student and a member of the teaching staff, at the London School of Economics and the contribution this experience made to his research leading to the 'Nobel Prize' in Economics.

When the name of the Nobel Prize winner in Economics is announced there is a mad scramble by academic institutions to see whether they can claim the winner as one of their own. This paper analyses the distribution of winners by the institutions that claim them and suggests a way of evaluating whether the claims are justified or not. The method is i...

1 The choice of 'He' in the title is not intended to be sexist, but reflects the fact that the Royal Swedish Academy of Science decided not to award the prize to Joan Robinson, who deserved the prize in the view of many economists, so that all the recipients to date have been men. A survey of names of economists likely to win the prize in the futur...

Is the abbreviation 'LSE' merely an abbreviation for the 'London School of Economics and Political Science' or does the 'London School' refer to a School of Economics in the same way that economists refer to the 'Chicago School' or the 'Cambridge School(s)'? This paper explores this question in relation to the founding of the LSE and its developmen...

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SAIS Review 21.1 (2001) 1-11 What do the following have in common? The answer is that they are examples of four different types of informal economic activity (IEA). This essay attempts to answer the following question: If we define IEA as the production and distribution of economic goods and services whose value is not included fully, if at all, in...

One answer to the question "How Rich are We?" is to compare levels of National Income either across countries or for a single country over time. However, the relevance of this approach depends on how accurately National Income measures the output of goods and services of a country. While it is difficult to measure, the Black Economy represents the...

I shall argue that 'measurement without theory' is a fair description of the published empirical work aimed at guestimating the size of the 'hidden' or 'black economy'. I shall also argue that a mere guestimate of the overall size of the black economy is of limited value for the policy maker; it is also important to know who is doing what, where, h...

As FitzGerald makes clear in Chapter 2, the implementation of the New Economic Model (NEM) involves replacing the earlier import-substituting industrialisation (ISI) strategy with a drive for export-led growth (ELG). This requires a shift in production from non-tradeable to tradeable goods and services, with a corresponding movement of factors of p...

This paper argues that in much of the literature on the role of finance in development, "financial dualism' goes far beyond the distinction between formal and informal financial sectors by reintroducing an outdated dualism between the urban (formal) and rural (traditional) sectors from labour market theory to classify the customers of financial ins...

On the basis of indirect estimates of the size of the black economy, it has been argued that failure to measure black economic activity in official government statistics has produced a misleading picture of the state of the economy, overestimating both the rate of inflation and the level of unemployment and underestimating the effects of tax rates...