Famous Dead Economists

We will reserve the top left-hand corner of our departmental header to honor a famous economist and to possibly educate our students on the history of economic thought. Depending on the diligence of the webmaster, the photo will be changed on an occasional basis. A more exhaustive (and intelligent) treatment of these economists may be found at The History of Economic Thought website.

	Frank Knight (1885-1972). Made the distinction between "risk" and "uncertainty", risk in essence corresponding to so-called objective probabilities, uncertainty to subjective probabilities.
	Adam Smith (1723-1790). Author of the Wealth of Nations (1776). Among my favorite Smith quotes: "The division of labor is limited by the extent of the market." "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." And my all time favorite, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, of the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.”
	Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929). Another Chicago economist, Veblen was best known for his dense prose, theory of conspicuous consumption, and for chasing the wives of his colleagues.
	Joseph Bertrand (1822-1900). Received fame from his negative review of Cournot's book. "The mathematical reasoning [of Cournot's book] is not, however, clear to everyone; the results seem of little importance, and sometime, I must confess, they appear unacceptable."
	Antoine-Augustin Cournot (1801-1877). Studied the interdependent decision making of firms under oligopoly.
	Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). The great English philosopher, who pioneered the theory of utility, also contributed to the economics of crime. "The value of the punishment must not be less than that what is sufficient to outweigh that of the profit of the offense."

Last Updated on: March 17, 2006