Abstract
Cord looks at the work of Arnold Plant. After an examination of Plant’s life and career, the focus is on the seminal contributions that he made in the 1930s to the economics of copyright on books and patents for inventions, and how his views on these issues reflected his wider dislike of monopoly. Cord then considers Plant’s work on Africa, in particular the South African economy, this interest resulting from the time he spent at Cape Town University in the 1920s. Following on from this, there is an examination of Plant’s deep involvement with the Department of Business Administration at LSE, before a concluding section highlights the significant influence he had on generations of students at the School, including Ronald Coase and Arthur Lewis.
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Notes
- 1.
There appears to be no extant record detailing Plant’s academic performance at School.
- 2.
After a period working for a timber broker, Piercy became an undergraduate at LSE in 1910. He was appointed to the School’s staff on graduation in 1913 and was drafted into government service on the outbreak of war. A distinguished business career followed (see Coase 1986: 82).
- 3.
Plant was one of six students out of a total of 65 to secure a First in the BSc(Econ) in 1923, another being Robbins. However, the recipient of the Gladstone Memorial Prize for the best performance in the degree for that year was Lilian Friedlander (see Plant Papers, BLPES Archives: Plant/1/2, folder 1). Meanwhile, the fact that Plant was able to study for two degrees at the same time led the University of London to change its regulations so that this would no longer be possible.
- 4.
Plant was also President of the Students’ Union at LSE in 1922/1923.
- 5.
Plant was already displaying a degree of self-confidence as an economist before he had taken up the post in Cape Town, his views on how to reduce unemployment being published in a letter to The Times on 19 September 1923. Noting the usual (subsequently Keynesian case) for public works projects, Plant argued that private sector employment might be increased by at least two measures: first, exemptions on business property tax and second, changes to the system of local rates (see Plant 1923: 6).
- 6.
As an indication of the difficulties that could sometimes occur in trying to fill senior economics positions in provincial universities, at the time that the authorities at Liverpool had inquired about Plant’s availability, the Chair of Economics at the University had been vacant since Gonner’s death in 1922.
- 7.
On their return to London, the Plants would settle in Hampstead Garden Suburb, North London, just a few streets away from the Robbins family. However, relations between Plant and Robbins soured after the Second World War (see Howson 2011: 715).
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
This length of copyright was retained in the UK until 1995 when it was extended to the life of the author plus 70 years.
- 11.
The Monopolies and Restrictive Practices Commission has been reconstituted several times since its inception, first as the Monopolies Commission in 1956, then as the Monopolies and Mergers Commission in 1973, and once more as the Competition Commission in 1999. The Competition Commission was dissolved in 2014 and was replaced by the Competition and Markets Authority.
- 12.
There is an interesting, albeit brief, discussion of the work of the FCC by Plant in a letter to Coase in the Plant Papers, BLPES Archives: Plant/1/39. Plant wrote to Coase after having read his former pupil’s seminal paper on the FCC (see Coase 1959).
- 13.
Plant’s interest in the South African economy was not just confined to official policy on race. For example, in a 1931 article for Economica he provided a detailed examination of the anti-dumping regulations which had been introduced in South Africa (see Plant 1931). At a broader level, and also in 1931, he co-authored ‘Tariff-Making in Practice’, with Frederic Benham (see Plant and Benham 1931), which considered issues such as the differences between tariff theory and tariff practice, emergency tariffs and permanent tariffs.
- 14.
The fact that Plant was forthright in his view that vocational education should be based in universities did not meet with universal approval at the School, including by a ‘majority of members of the Academic Board’ (Dahrendorf 1995: 419).
- 15.
Perhaps realising that more effort, albeit ultimately unsuccessful, needed to be made to try to bolster student numbers, Plant became Director of the Commerce Degree Bureau in 1938, no doubt one of his specific aims being to encourage those graduating with a BCom degree to consider carrying on their studies by enrolling with the Department of Business Administration. The Commerce Degree Bureau was established in 1918 to advise and assist external students of the University of London studying for a BCom, although its functions did change subsequently until its closure in 1987.
References
Main Works by Arnold Plant
Plant, A. (1923). ‘Unemployment’. The Times, 19 September: 6.
Plant, A. (1925). ‘The Supply of Overseas Capital’. South African Journal of Industries and Labour Gazette, 8(12): 749–760.
Plant, A. (1926). ‘The Reports of the South African Economic and Wage Commission (1925)’. Economic Journal, 36(144): 669–680.
Plant, A. (1927). ‘The Economics of the Native Question’. Voorslag, 1(11): 21–38. Reprinted as Chapter 1 in A. Plant (1974) Selected Economic Essays and Addresses. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul: 3–17.
Plant, A. (1928). ‘The Future of Central Banking in South Africa’. The Banker, 5(26): 384–392.
Plant, A. (1931). ‘The Anti-Dumping Regulations of the South African Tariff’. Economica, 31(February): 63–102.
Plant, A. (1932a). ‘Trends in Business Administration’. Economica, 35(February): 45–62.
Plant, A. (1932). ‘Competition and Co-ordination in Transport’. Journal of the Institute of Transport, 13(3): 127–135.
Plant, A. (1934a). ‘The Economic Aspects of Copyright in Books’. Economica, New Series, 1(2): 167–195. Reprinted as Chapter 4 in A. Plant (1974) Selected Economic Essays and Addresses. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul: 57–86.
Plant, A. (1934b). ‘The Economic Theory Concerning Patents for Inventions’. Economica, New Series, 1(1): 30–51. Reprinted as Chapter 3 in A. Plant (1974) Selected Economic Essays and Addresses. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul: 35–56.
Plant, A. (1934). ‘La Réglementation des Transports’. Revue d’Économie Politique, 48(5): 1520–1536.
Plant, A. (1935–1936). ‘The Academic Approach to Business Problems’. Journal of the Insurance Institute of London, 29(1): 35–52.
Plant, A. (1937a). ‘Centralize or Decentralize?’. In A. Plant (ed.) Some Modern Business Problems. London: Longmans, Green and Co: 1–33. Reprinted as Chapter 9 in A. Plant (1974) Selected Economic Essays and Addresses. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul: 174–198.
Plant, A. (1937b). ‘The Distribution of Proprietary Articles’. In A. Plant (ed.) Some Modern Business Problems. London: Longmans, Green and Co: 301–336. Reprinted as Chapter 10 in A. Plant (1974) Selected Economic Essays and Addresses. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul: 199–225.
Plant, A. (1937). ‘A Staff College for Business?’. British Management Review, 2(4): 70–94.
Plant, A. (1937). ‘The Value of Economic Training for Public Administration’. Public Administration, 15(3): 245–254.
Plant, A. (1938). ‘Population Trends and International Migration’. Chapter 6 in T.H. Marshall et al. The Population Problem. London: George Allen & Unwin: 120–141.
Plant, A. (1948a). ‘Monopolies and Restrictive Practices’. Lloyds Bank Review, New Series, 10(October): 1–21.
Plant, A. (1948). ‘Land Planning and the Functions of Ownership’. Westminster Bank Review, May: 1–8.
Plant, A. (1953). The New Commerce in Ideas and Intellectual Property. London: Athlone Press. Reprinted as Chapter 5 in A. Plant (1974) Selected Economic Essays and Addresses. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul: 87–116.
Plant, A. (1956a). ‘Pay As You View: The Case Stated’. The Times (Radio and Television Supplement), 22 August: xiii.
Plant, A. (1956). The Substance and the Shadow—Reflections on Prosperity. Southampton: University of Southampton. Reprinted as Chapter 6 in A. Plant (1974) Selected Economic Essays and Addresses. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul: 121–139.
Plant, A. (1958a). ‘Pay As You View’. The Listener, 25 September: 462–464.
Plant, A. (1958). ‘The Economic Approach to the Peaceful Use of Nuclear Power’. Paper read at a meeting of Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy (UNESCO, Paris), 15–19 September. Reprinted as Chapter 11 in A. Plant (1974) Selected Economic Essays and Addresses. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul: 226–248.
Plant, A. (1959). ‘Engineering in an Expanding Economy’. Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, New Series, 5: 363–373. Reprinted as Chapter 7 in A. Plant (1974) Selected Economic Essays and Addresses. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul: 140–166.
Plant, A. (1962). ‘Britain’s Bid for World Prosperity’. Optima, 12(1): 23–30.
Plant, A. (1963). ‘Economic Development, 1795–1921’. Chapter 29 in E.A. Walker (ed.) The Cambridge History of the British Empire: Volume VIII. South Africa, Rhodesia and the High Commission Territories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 788–836.
Plant, A. (1965). ‘Review of The Economics of the Colour Bar, by W.H. Hutt’. Economic Journal, 75(300): 827–828.
Plant, A. (1970a). ‘Introduction’. In Economic Issues in Immigration. Readings in Political Economy 5, Institute of Economic Affairs. Surrey: Gresham Press: xi–xviii. Reprinted as ‘Economic Issues in Immigration’, Chapter 2 in A. Plant (1974) Selected Economic Essays and Addresses. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul: 18–27.
Plant, A. (1970). ‘A Tribute to Hayek: The Rational Persuader’. Economic Age, 2(2): 4–8. Reprinted as ‘Homage to Hayek’, Chapter 8 in A. Plant (1974) Selected Economic Essays and Addresses. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul: 167–173.
Plant, A. and F.C. Benham (1931). ‘Tariff-Making in Practice’. Chapter 15 in Tariffs: The Case Examined, by a Committee of Economists under the Chairmanship of Sir William Beveridge. London: Longmans, Green and Co: 185–209.
Plant, A. and R.F. Fowler (1939). ‘The Analysis of Costs of Retail Distribution: Illustrated from Data Relating to a Sample of Departmental Stores’. Economica, New Series, 6(22): 121–155.
Other Works Referred To
Baxter, W.T. (1991). ‘Early Critics of Costing: LSE in the 1930s’. In O.F. Graves (ed.) The Costing Heritage: Studies in Honor of S. Paul Garner. Harrisonburg, VA: The Academy of Accounting Historians: 138–149.
Beveridge, W.H. (1935). Department of Business Administration: Report on the First Five Years’ Work and Proposals for the Future. London: London School of Economics.
Coase, R.H. (1959). ‘The Federal Communications Commission’. Journal of Law and Economics, 2(October): 1–40.
Coase, R.H. (1977). ‘Review of Selected Economic Essays and Addresses, by A. Plant’. Journal of Economic Literature, 15(1): 86–88.
Coase, R.H. (1986). ‘Professor Sir Arnold Plant: His Ideas and Influence’. In M.J. Anderson (ed.) The Unfinished Agenda: Essays on the Political Economy of Government Policy in Honour of Arthur Seldon. London: Institute of Economic Affairs: 79–90.
Coase, R.H. (1987). ‘Arnold Plant’. In J. Eatwell, M. Milgate and P. Newman (eds) The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics. Volume 3. London: Macmillan: 891.
Cord, R.A. (2017). ‘The London and Cambridge Economic Service: History and Contributions’. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 41(1): 307–326.
Dahrendorf, R. (1995). LSE: A History of the London School of Economics and Political Science, 1895–1995. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gallaway, T. and D. Kinnear (2004). ‘Open Source Software, the Wrongs of Copyright, and the Rise of Technology’. Journal of Economic Issues, 38(2): 467–474.
Howson, S. (2011). Lionel Robbins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hui, K.-L. and I.P.L. Png (2002). ‘On the Supply of Creative Work: Evidence from the Movies’. American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, 92(2): 217–220.
Hume, D. (1751). An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. London: A. Millar.
Layson, S.K. (1982). ‘Is There a Conflict Between Authors and Publishers over Book Prices?’. Southern Economic Journal, 48(4): 1057–1060.
Littlechild, S.C. (1986). ‘The Incentives to Innovate Under Alternative Property Rights Assignments With Special Reference to the Patent System: Comment’. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 142(1): 227–229.
Melcher, D. (1934). ‘A Five-Year Copyright?’. The Bookseller, 17 October: 748.
Robbins, L. (1971). Autobiography of an Economist. London: Macmillan.
Tribe, K. (2004). ‘Plant, Sir Arnold (1898–1978)’. In H.C.G. Matthew and B. Harrison (eds) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 517–518.
Yamey, B. (1980). ‘Professor Sir Arnold Plant, 1898–1978’. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, 143(1): 92.
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Cord, R.A. (2019). Arnold Plant (1898–1978). In: Cord, R.A. (eds) The Palgrave Companion to LSE Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58274-4_13
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