Austin Robinson: The Life of an Economic Adviser

207 Pages·1993·3.23 MB·English

by  Alec Cairncross (auth.)

AUSTIN ROBINSON
Also by Sir Alec Cairncross
A COUNTRY TO PLAY WITH
ECONOMICS AND ECONOMIC POLICY
GOODBYE GREAT BRITAIN (with K. Burk)
PLANNING IN WARTIME: Aircraft Production in Britain,
Germany and the USA
STERLING IN DECLINE (with B. Eichengreen)
THE BRITISH ECONOMY SINCE THE WAR
THE ECONOMIC SECTION 1939-61: A Study in
Economic Advising (with N. Watts)
THE PRICE OF WAR
THE ROBERT HALL DIARIES, Volume 1: 1947-53
and Volume 2: 1954-61 (editor)
YEARS OF RECOVERY
Austin Robinson
The Life of an Economic Adviser
Alec Cairncross
150th YEAR
M
Palgrave Macmillan
© Sir Alec Caimcross 1993
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1993
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
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claims for damages.
First published in Great Britain 1993 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-349-22897-3 ISBN 978-1-349-22895-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-22895-9
First published in the United States of America 1993 by
Scholarly and Reference Division,
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-09471-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Caimcross, Alec, Sir, 1911-
Austin Robinson: the life of an economic adviser I Alec
Caimcross.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-09471-3
1. Robinson, E. A. G. (Edward Austin Gossage). 2. Economists
-Great Britain-Biography. 3. Great Britain-Economic
policy-1918-1945. 4. Great Britain-Economic policy-l945-
I. Title.
HBI03.R628C35 1993
338.941'0092-dc20
[Bl 92-36201
CIP
Contents
Preface vii
Introduction 1
1 Early Days 4
2 Tutoring a Maharajah 19
3 The 1930s: Early Publications 37
4 African Survey 51
5 Wartime and After: 1939-45 78
6 The Postwar Years: 1945--8 97
7 Cambridge and Elsewhere: 1948--92 110
8 Austin the Economist 144
9 Austin the Man 165
Notes 175
E. A. C. Robinson: A Bibliography 183
Index 191
Publishers' Note
Sadly Sir Austin Robinson did not live to see the publication of
this book. He died on 1 June 1993, atthe age of 95, after the proofs
had been passed for press.
Preface
Sir Austin Robinson has had a unique career, beginning in the nine
teenth century and stretching out towards the twenty-first. His long
life includes a spell as a seaplane pilot in the First World War when
seaplanes were barely ten years old; tutoring a maharajah for two
years in India; travelling for 12,000 miles through Africa in 1932;
taking part in the various revolutions in economic thought in Cam
bridge in the 1930s; playing a leading part on the economic side of
the war effort from 1939 to 1945; and exercising a major influence
after the war in nearly every major association of economists in this
country.
I started to write his life with all this in mind but also from a sense
of personal obligation. It was he who brought about what proved to
be the most important event in my professional career at the end of
1939. He rang me up when I was just about to go to the Scottish
Home Department in Edinburgh to organise information-gathering
on the state of public morale by pub-crawl, and suggested, out of the
blue, that I should join him and John Jewkes in the War Cabinet
Offices as some kind of economic adviser. This brought me in at the
birth of what, a year later, became the Economic Section of the War
Cabinet Offices and was transferred in 1953 to the Treasury as the
chief source of economic advice to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Then at the end of the war I took over from Austin in Berlin as head
of the Economic Advisory Panel, acting for the Treasury in the
quadripartite negotiations on the future level of industry in Ger
many. On my return to London in the spring of 1946 I was asked
once again to follow him, this me ~s Economic Adviser to the Board
of Trade.
When I came to prepare a draft of the memoir, I found that much
more detail survived to enliven the narrative, both in letters from
India and Africa and in wartime papers, than I could have guessed.
Added to that, Austin has been indefatigable in amplifying my draft
with his own memories, written in his usual elegant style. I must
have had at least a letter a week from him, sometimes even two a
day, many of them filling several pages and all containing material
that I could build into the text like a bird's nest. Although I take full
viii Preface
responsibility for the manuscript, a high proportion of it is written in
Austin's own words or condenses information he has supplied.
Among those to whom I am indebted for information in prepar
ing this memoir are Joyce Baird, Ezra Bennathan, Henry Phelps
Brown, Tam Dalyell, Charles Feinstein, Geoffrey Harcourt, Barbara
Jeffrey, David Layton, Robin Matthews, James Meade, Margaret
Robinson, Aubrey Silberston, Hans Singer and John Toye. I am
indebted to Cambridge University Press for permission to reprint in
Chapter 1 an extract from Eminent Economists: Their Life Philosophies.
I should like also to thank Mrs Anne Robinson for once more reduc
ing my scribbles to order and legibility.
ALEC CAIRNCROSS
Introduction
Sir Austin Robinson is the last of the Cambridge economists of
prewar days and by no means the least in the part he has played in
the development of the subject. He was a close associate of Keynes,
helping him with the editing of the Economic Journal before becom
ing joint editor with Roy Harrod in 1944, a post he held for 26 years.
He took a prominent part in the affairs of the University from the
planning of the old Marshall Library to the establishment of the
Department of Applied Economics and the development of the site
on Sidgwick A venue: it is not without cause that his name is at
tached to the Austin Robinson building on that site. He had a hand
in the postwar period in the creation and operation of several key
institutions, helping to launch the International Economic Associ
ation as its Treasurer (and, in effect, Secretary-General) from 1950 to
1959; taking part in the setting up of the Overseas Development
Institute and serving since its foundation on its Executive Commit
tee; acting as chairman of the National Institute for Economic and
Social Research from 1949 to 1962.
His official career was equally distinguished. With John Jewkes
and Harry Campion he was one of the founders of what developed
into the Economic Section and its twin, the Central Statistical Office.
He was the archetypal economic adviser: to the Ministry of Produc
tion in 1942-5; on reparations policy in 1945; to the Board of Trade
in 1946; to the Treasury as a member of its planning staff in 1947-8;
and long afterwards, in all but name, to the Ministry of Power in
1967-8. As we shall see, this is far from a comprehensive list: how
could it be for someone who was a test pilot in 1918 and a Fellow
of a Cambridge college five years later, yet was still able to draft a
report on energy and economic development for Taiwan in 1982 and
publish lengthy articles in the 1990s.
Although prominent as an economist, Austin Robinson would
not claim to be a leading theorist. In the 1930s, it is true, he was a
recognised contributor to economic theory, the author of two of the
Cambridge Economic Handbooks, then the staple reading of univer
sity students of economics. In their impact on the profession these
works did not compare with that of his wife's Economics of Imperfect
Competition. It may be, none the less, that he was closer to modem
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