Abstract
Cairnes was born at Castlebellingham, County Louth, Ireland. At the height of his career he was probably the best-known political economist in England after John Stuart Mill, whose friend and associate he was from 1859 onwards; but his interest in economic questions developed relatively late, after periods spent working in his family’s brewing business and in journalism. In 1856 he competed in the examination by which the Whately professorship of political economy at Trinity College, Dublin, was then filled, and was appointed for a five-year term. In 1859 he was also appointed Professor of Political Economy and Jurisprudence at Queen’s College, Galway, a post which he held until 1870. However, he employed a deputy to perform his duties in Galway after he himself moved to London in 1865. In 1866 he became Professor of Political Economy at University College, London, but was forced to resign in 1872 by the progress of the rheumatic disease which left him almost completely paralysed before his death in 1875.
Keywords
- Cairnes, J. E.
- Deductive method
- Fawcett, H.
- Jevons, W. S.
- Land tenure
- Malthus’s theory of population
- Mill, J. S.
- Rent control
- Slavery
- Subjective theory of value
- Verificationist methodology
- Wages fund
JEL Classifications
This chapter was originally published in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd edition, 2008. Edited by Steven N. Durlauf and Lawrence E. Blume
Bibliography
Black, R.D. Collison. 1960. Jevons and Cairnes. Economica 27: 214–232.
Boylan, T.A., and T.P. Foley. 1984. John Elliott Cairnes, John Stuart Mill and Ireland: Some problems for political economy. In Economists and the Irish economy, ed. A.E. Murphy. Dublin: Irish Academic Press.
O’Brien, G. 1943. J.S. Mill and J.E. Cairnes. Economica 10: 273–285.
Schumpeter, J.A. 1954. History of economic analysis. New York: Oxford University Press.
Weinberg, A. 1970. John Elliott Cairnes and the American Civil War. London: Kingswood Press.
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Black, R.D.C. (2008). Cairnes, John Elliott (1823–1875). In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5_82-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5_82-2
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Latest
Cairnes, John Elliott (1823–1875)- Published:
- 07 March 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5_82-2
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Original
Cairnes, John Elliott (1823–1875)- Published:
- 14 October 2016
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5_82-1