Abstract
In the end the choice of Oxford appears to have been dictated by circumstances as much as any choice on the part of Kalecki himself. There was research to be done, notably the commissioned study of the economic consequences of the German occupation of Poland, and the Oxford Institute of Statistics, which had been set up in 1935 with finance from the Rockefeller Foundation, was depleted of its researchers. Its Director was Jacob Marschak, whose starting point in Economics, in Rosa Luxemburg and the critique of Hilferding was the same as Kalecki’s. He had been active in finding employment for Kalecki, but had left for the United States in December 1938, on a Rockefeller travelling fellowship. His colleagues, Redvers Opie, Hubert Henderson, and Roy Harrod, had gone into government service, where economic planning and finance for the war against Germany were now major priorities.
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Notes
- 1.
Arrow, ‘Jacob Marschak 1898–1977’ 1991; Toporowski, Michał Kalecki Vol. 1 pp. 111–115. Marschak’s teacher in Germany was Emil Lederer, whose theory of the business cycle anticipated that of Kalecki in important respects. See Lederer ‘Monopole und Konjunktur’ 1927.
- 2.
Papers of the Oxford Institute of Statistics, University Archives, Bodleian Library, (henceforth OIS Papers) UR/SI/1 File 1.
- 3.
J. Osiatyński (ed.) The Collected Works of Michał Kalecki Volume I pp. 569–570.
- 4.
Ibid., p. 570.
- 5.
Letter from the Secretary of the Institute to the Registrar of Oxford University, dated 15 October 1940, OIS Papers UR/SI/1 File 1. These figures place the researchers of the Oxford Institute in the low-income class that Keynes believed should have their incomes augmented (Keynes, How to Pay for the War p. 35).
- 6.
Minutes of the Meeting of the Standing Committee of the Oxford Institute of Statistics on 17 September 1941 UR/SI/1 File 1. Kalecki was now in that income class that Keynes had argued was under-taxed in the pre-war years (Keynes, ibid., p. 23).
- 7.
Minutes of the Meeting of the Standing Committee of the Oxford Institute of Statistics on 22 September 1943 UR/SI/1 File 1.
- 8.
Minutes of the Meeting of the Standing Committee of the Oxford Institute of Statistics on 12 May 1944 UR/SI/1 File 2.
- 9.
Steindl, ‘The Present State of Economics’ 1984. See also Worswick ‘Kalecki at Oxford’ 1977.
- 10.
Working at the Institute was also the industrial economist P.W.S. Andrews. According to a note by Kalecki, Andrews was working a study examining changes in the stocks of consumption goods (‘Changes in Stocks of Commodities’ 1941). However, John King informs me that Andrews was a conscientious objector, that is, someone who refused military service on ethical grounds. This may explain why, after a brief note on rationing in the fourth issue of the Institute’s Bulletin in 1940, no further articles appear in Andrews’s name, and there are no articles by him in the Studies in War Economics that the Institute published in 1947.
- 11.
See Volume 1 of this biography, pp. 127–128.
- 12.
Kalecki and Tew ‘A New Method of Trend Elimination’ 1940, and ‘A New Method of Trend Elimination: A Correction,’ 1941.
- 13.
See Kriesler Kalecki’s Microanalysis pp. 8–10.
- 14.
Kalecki, ‘The Supply Curve of an Industry under Imperfect Competition’ 1940. In his later, 1954, exposition Kalecki made this link with the differential market power of particular firms even more explicit, by making the profit margin of any given firm an increasing function of its ‘degree of monopoly’ or market power. See pp. 73–74.
- 15.
Robinson, The Economics of Imperfect Competition 1933, and Chamberlin The Theory of Monopolistic Competition 1933.
- 16.
Hall, R., and Hitch, C.J., ‘Price theory and business behaviour’ 1939. Hitch was on the Standing Committee of the Oxford Institute. He survived the call-up of economists to government service because, as an American, he was exempt from war service until the United Sates entered the war at the end of 1941.
- 17.
See Volume 1 of this biography, pp. 101–102.
- 18.
Keynes How to Pay for the War 1940.
- 19.
Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes Volume 3 Fighting for Freedom 1937–1946 2001, pp. 52–60.
- 20.
Kalecki, ‘A Scheme of the Curtailment of Consumption’ 1940b. After the war, in 1947, the Oxford Institute of Statistics published in one volume entitled Studies in War Economics a selection of articles ‘on problems of war economics,’ including 12 articles on ‘Consumer’s Rationing and Price Controls,’ of which four were by Kalecki, two by Josef Steindl, and one each by J.L. Nicholson, G.D.N. Worswick, J. Goldmann, F.A. Burchardt, S. Moos, and an anonymous author who contributed an article on fuel rationing. However, for reasons unknown to this author, Kalecki’s above article on Keynes’s proposal was not included in that volume.
- 21.
Kalecki, ‘General Rationing’ 1941a, and ‘Notes on General Rationing’ 1941b.
- 22.
Kalecki, ‘Towards Comprehensive Rationing’ 1941c.
- 23.
Kalecki, ‘Inflation, Wages and Rationing’ 1941d.
- 24.
Kalecki, ‘The Technique of Rationing: To the Editor of The Banker’ 1942b.
- 25.
Ibid.
- 26.
Kalecki, ‘Differential Rationing’ 1942a.
- 27.
Goldmann, ‘Differential Rationing in Practice’ 1942. In Studies in War Economics, the year of publication is incorrectly given as 1945.
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Toporowski, J. (2018). Oxford. In: Michał Kalecki: An Intellectual Biography. Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69664-5_3
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