The Influence of Cambridge Upon the Professionalisation of Postwar Australian Economics I. Introduction

Paper for the 27th HETSA conference, Auckland University, New Zealand, July 2014 The Influence of Cambridge upon the Professionalisation of Postwar Australian Economics by Alex Millmow1 I. Introduction This paper attempts to assess the influence Cambridge University had upon the development of Australian economic profession in the immediate post-war era. In particular, the paper identifies those Australian economists that went to Cambridge during the period, 1945-60, intent upon furthering their education. The article recounts some of their experiences in what was then one of the world’s leading economics departments. It was, however, also a time when the Cambridge Faculty of Economics and Politics was becoming fractured along doctrinal lines especially in the 1950s. It seems that nearly all of the Australian economists who went there found the experience profound, some more than others. Most came home with a doctorate, diploma or some other qualification. Some, like Geoff Harcourt, have already written about how, initially at least, their supervision was plainly inadequate. More controversially, Murray Kemp in an interview with William Coleman, spoke about ‘The dead hand of Cambridge economics’ suggesting that the experience for most Australian economics students there had not been a happy one due to the lack of graduate supervision and that, in short, ‘they’d made a huge mistake in coming to England’ (Coleman, 2005, 7). Kemp spent 1957 at Cambridge as a Nuffield Fellow but was not based at any of the colleges.2 Harcourt (2006) has vigorously contested Kemp’s contention. This paper also challenges Kemp’s view, listing the nine successful doctoral students and recording, for 1 Federation Business School, Ballarat, Federation University, Australia. I am indebted to Alan Boxer, Peter Drake, John King, Marjorie Harper, Geoff Harcourt, Sue Howson, Joe Isaac, John Lodewijks, John Nieuwenhuysen, Jonathan Pincus, Michael Schneider, Frank Stilwell and Bob Wallace for their generous comments, advice and corrections on earlier drafts of this article. 2 Kemp did his doctorate at John Hopkins in international trade supervised by Evsey Domar. It was, however, ‘almost by accident’ since his earlier doctoral work on welfare economics, supervised by Carl Christ and Arnold Harberger, was apparently ‘resisted’ by the chairman of the department. ’The Enigmatic Professor Kemp: the early years’ by Daniel Leonard appeared in RECONaissance 1(2) which was, for a while, the in-house magazine of the economics and commerce students of UNSW students. 1 some, their experiences, negative and positive, there. The paper closely examines the cases of Keith Frearson and Hugh Hudson who failed to submit their doctorates. In tribute to John King, this paper will take the opportunity to touch upon some of the themes raised by him in his review article of Luigi Pasinetti (2007) Keynes and the Cambridge Keynesians. In that review King pondered what impact the ‘intellectual arrogance’, ’exclusiveness’ and ‘the Cambridge prima donna syndrome’ had on young postgraduates. In particular, King suggested (2011, 13) that it would make an interesting research project to explore whether the notoriously disputatious Cambridge Faculty of Economics and Politics might have deterred those with Keynesian sympathies to study there. In another place, King (1997, 301) pondered just how many Australian economists had actually gone there up till the 1960s. In that regard this paper can identify over twenty Australians who undertook a course of study there. Those who went to Cambridge during this period include some of the brightest names in post-war Australian economics: Allan Barton, Burgess Cameron, Don Cochrane, Keith Frearson, John McBain Grant, Geoff Harcourt, Austin Holmes, Hugh Hudson, Duncan Ironmonger, Peter Karmel, John McCarty, Max Newton, Bert Prowse, Eric Russell, Wilfred Salter, Michael Schneider, Geelum Simpson-Lee, Graham Tucker, Roger Tuckwell and Jim Wilson. This paper indeed the bulk of it, will only recount, at varying length and in chronological order, the experiences of Russell, Cochrane, Karmel, Tucker, Cameron, Frearson and Hudson since their correspondence with their lecturers back in Australia, namely, Wilfred Prest and Heinz Arndt, is extant. It was Prest, most of all, who, as a caring head of department, monitored the progress of all the Melbourne commerce graduates who traditionally went to Cambridge. Given that others went there from other places during this time reference will be made to them also. After a brief discussion on the nature of economics education in Australia in Part II, these biographical details are listed in Part III of the paper. Before concluding, the paper will undertake a simple audit of those who attended Cambridge during this period. This is attempted in Part IV. II. Underpinnings Only a handful of Australian universities taught economics during the immediate post-war era (Williams, 2009). None of those universities offered doctoral training in economics until the ANU was established in 1948. Even then, the ANU made a slow start in attracting young minds to further their training in economics partly because Copland, the inaugural Vice Chancellor, encountered difficulties finding an eminent economist to head the putative research school (Cornish, 2007). There was also a ‘colonial tradition’ that the finest social sciences postgraduates, including economists, headed overseas to complete their education (Williams, 1966, 310). Australian universities were, in any case, remarkably slow to offer doctoral programs in economics. For instance, Melbourne would not have its first Ph.D. in economics until 1955 with Ken Rivett and the University of Sydney, even later in 1962, with Boris 2 Schedvin (Coleman, 2013, 15). In the interwar period there had been a trickle of Australian economists going abroad to further their studies, most of whom, were funded by Rockefeller scholarships. Six Australian economists had gone to Cambridge during this period – Keith Isles, Gordon Mackay, J.M. Garland, Jack Horsfall, Jean Polglaze and Richard Downing (Millmow, forthcoming). Imitation is the finest form of flattery and Copland, the inaugural Dean at the Faculty of Commerce at Melbourne, modelled the teaching of economics upon Cambridge. In the post-war years Melbourne remained Cambridge-dominated with most of its best and brightest gravitating there to complete their studies (Mongiovi, 2001), (Williams, 2010). Harcourt recalls that Marshall, Keynes, Pigou, the Robinsons, Richard Kahn, Nicholas Kaldor, Maurice Dobb, Michal Kalecki, Gerard Shove, Dennis Robertson and Piero Sraffa were almost ‘household names’ to Melbourne staff (Mongiovi, 2001, 503). It meant that many Australian economists that went overseas during this period ‘acquired the pure milk of the General Theory, first hand, from Robinson, Kahn and Kaldor’(King, 2003, 143). Wilfred Prest, who became the Truby Williams professor in May 1946 told Stuart Wilson from the University of Sydney that ‘We take the view that it is more important for students to read Keynes’ own book rather than read articles about Keynes’ (Prest to J. S. G. Wilson 28/5/1946, Prest Papers, UMA). Prest also informed the University Registrar at Cambridge that ‘We try to keep the standard of the final exam comparable with that of the Cambridge Tripos’ (Prest to J. C. Taupin 22/8/1951, Prest Papers, UMA). Melbourne could also still call upon the graces of L.F. Giblin who, as a Supernumerary Fellow of King’s College, was happy to sponsor students applying there. Also facilitating the Cambridge connection was that Prest had his brother, Alan, who was a fellow of Christ’s College from 1948 until 1964. The two would work together to place Melbourne students in the colleges including Cochrane, Karmel, Barton, Cameron and Tucker. Another support in Cambridge was Brian Reddaway who had spent two years in Melbourne in the 1930s (Millmow, 2003). Reddaway would be sought after by the Australians as a supervisor (Harcourt, 2006, 147). In 1935 Austin Robinson had confessed to Copland that the Cambridge faculty had not catered well for the influx of students and that it would have to better prepare for the future. Possibly as a response, Piero Sraffa was made Secretary of the Degree Committee and Assistant Director of Research, charged with overseeing the admission of research students and deciding upon which degree they would be undertaking and choice of supervisor (Marcuzzo, 2012, 54). Within that ambit was the personal supervision of postgraduate students but the only successful case of a doctoral student whom Sraffa supervised through to completion was an Australian, Tucker. However, as Marcuzzo (2012, 54-5) points out, Sraffa’s modest score on that count overlooks his influence over the direction taken by many graduate students who had also come to Cambridge partly because of his presence. We will see, however, that there were grumblings by some of the Australians that had gone there just after the war. Word of this might have broken out. When Sam Soper, then a lecturer in economics at the University of 3 Tasmania, sought advice about where to go overseas Prest was adamant that English universities were still superior to anything in North America. He told Soper that he would get more out of attending English universities: ‘Those US doctorates are designed for people having done very little serious work at the undergraduate level and there is a real risk of you being seriously disappointed at the standard - not to mention being bored stiff by the repeat courses’. That aside, Prest felt Chicago was better than Harvard adding, though, that ‘the place would drive me crazy – they cannot think of anything beyond the virtues of a freely operating price system - but in the technique of mathematical economics and statistics they are unsurpassed (except perhaps by Cambridge, England)’ (Prest to Soper 29/3/1950, Prest Papers, UMA). We will soon discover that the reverence for Cambridge was not eternal. Prest was more ascute in advising Soper that in England ‘The postgraduate student is too often left to sink or swim on his own.

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