3. Nuffield College, Oxford (1959–61) and then King’s College, Cambridge (1961–76)

Rockefeller Fellow 1935–6; Lecturer in Public Administration, Manchester 1936–45; Economic Section of War Cabinet Secretariat 1940–45; Official Fellow of Nuffield 1946–64, CBE.

He is mentioned by both Pasinetti and Kaldor in their correspondence.

Leonard James Callaghan, Baron Callaghan of Cardiff (1912–2005), was British Chancellor of the Exchequer (1964–57), Home Secretary (1967–70), Foreign Secretary (1974–76) and British Prime Minister (1976–79). Callaghan is to date the only politician in history to have served in all four of the ‘Great Offices of State’.

Luigi Pasinetti (1959) ‘On Concepts and Measures of Changes in Productivity’, The Review of Economics and Statistics, pp. 270–82, with ‘Comment’ by Robert M. Solow, pp. 282–5, and ‘Reply’ by Pasinetti, pp. 285–6.

Sir John Hicks (1904–89), as he would be called later on, was without doubt a leading economic theorist of the twentieth century and along with Kenneth Arrow was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1972. His work was mainly on ‘pure economic theory’, in the fields of value, money, capital, growth and also on distribution (as pointed out in Baranzini 2008). In 2004, the ‘invisible college of former colleagues and pupils’ gathered in Bologna for the meeting ‘John Hicks: One Hundredth Anniversary Workshop’. The papers presented there were edited by Roberto Scazzieri, Amartya Sen and Stefano Zamagni with the title Markets, Money and Capital. Hicksian Economics for the Twenty-First Century. According to Scazzieri and Zamagni:

Hicks’s contribution often addresses contention issues, and sometimes suggest unconventional and controversial points of view. In John Hicks, we see economic theorizing at its most fundamental, almost formative, stage. In his writings, economic theorizing strives, and succeeds in maintaining, a balance between the requirements of analysis and the explicit recognition of the relevance of history and institutions. In short, Hick’s contribution to economics belongs both to the so-called ‘mainstream’ and to its critique. (Scazzieri and Zamagni 2008, p. 1)

Luigi Pasinetti and Gianpaolo Mariutti in their paper on ‘Hicks’s “conversion” – from J. R. to John’ not surprisingly conclude that: ‘Hicks was, and remained, an independent thinker. He paid a high price for this independence, by being surrounded by an atmosphere of solitude both in Cambridge and in Oxford – the two places that housed him in the critical moments of his academic life. […] It is in fact not surprising that, unlike many of his colleagues, Hicks did not claim to belong to a specific school of thought; even less that he should aim at founding one. This was in line with his introverted character, and even more so with his methodological stand. He has left us a remarkable example of scientific honesty in not hiding the ‘structural break’ that took place in his way of doing economics.’ (Pasinetti and Mariutti 2008, pp. 69–70)

See above on the members of Nuffield College, Oxford, 1959–61.

Robert (Robin) Charles Oliver Matthews (1927–2010) studied PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics) at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He was then briefly College Lecturer in Economics at Merton College, Oxford. In 1949, he moved to Cambridge, where he was University Assistant Lecturer in Economics, 1949–51, and then University Lecturer 1951–65. He was appointed Drummond Professor of Political Economy at All Souls, Oxford (when Sir John Hicks retired) 1965–75; and thereafter Professor of Political Economy, Cambridge University 1980–91. He was also Master of Clare College, Cambridge, 1975–93. Harcourt (2017) has written a lucid account of his scientific contribution and states that ‘… Robin [Matthews] held the two senior Oxbridge chairs [the Drummond chair at All Souls’ at Oxford and the Marshall’s chair at Cambridge]. His many contributions to the discipline, the profession, and the community make it abundantly clear why’ (Harcourt 2017, p. 956).

This is how Geoffrey Harcourt (1991, p. 25) summarizes the contribution of Richard F. Kahn to the Cambridge Economics School of that period. ‘In the realm of theory, as well as writing some careful papers of his own […] he [Kahn] played the major role of helpful detailed critic as Joan Robinson, Kaldor (who had come to King’s and the Cambridge Faculty in the late 1940s, principally through Kahn’s efforts), Luigi Pasinetti and others at Cambridge applied classical and Keynesian insights to the theory of distribution and economic growth, “generalising the General Theory to the long period”.’

Frank Horace Hahn was born on April 26, 1925, the son of Dr. Arnold Hahn, a mathematician. He studied economics at the LSE and Cambridge. From 1948 to 1960 he taught at Birmingham, first as a lecturer and then as a reader in mathematical economics. He was then Lecturer in Economics in the University of Cambridge 1960–67 and Professor of Economics at the LSE 1967–72. From 1972 to 1992, he was Professor of Economics in the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Churchill College, and from 1992 to 2000 in the University of Siena. His long paper (122 pages) ‘The Theory of Economic Growth – A Survey’, written jointly with R. C. O. Matthews, in The Economic Journal in 1964, contains also a detailed version of the post-Keynesian literature, including Luigi Pasinetti’s work. The review was followed by an updating in 1971. A scientific biography of Frank Hahn has recently been written by Bob Solow (2017).

In a recent interview (July 2011), G. C. Harcourt maintains that in spring 1961, while he was at Adelaide, the faculty there offered Pasinetti a suitable position; but Pasinetti turned it down since he had been elected Fellow of King’s College in Cambridge.

Jagdish Natwarlal Bhagwati was born in Mumbai in 1934, graduated from Sydenham College, Mumbai, and then earned his B.A. in Economics at St. John’s College, Cambridge. He then went to MIT where he took a Ph.D. in 1967. Later he became Professor of Economics at Columbia University, New York. He is the brother of P. N. Bhagwati, former Chief Justice of India, and of S. N. Bhagwati, a famous neurosurgeon. He is still one of the leading scholars in international trade.

Entered as ‘Dr. Rer. Pol. Budapest, Rockefeller Fellow, 1928; at Balliol since 1940.’

Especially after his marriage to Carmela Colombo of Lugano, Switzerland, on December 7, 1966.

This is what Milo Keynes (1975, p. 5) writes concerning one of the three residences of John Maynard Keynes, the other two being at 46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, London, and in the Tilton Farmhouse in the Downs, Sussex:

Maynard and Lydia had a flat in St Edward’s Passage near the Arts Theatre. It was King’s College property and, when it was being converted for them, wooden panels with carved Tudor roses were discovered lining the walls of the main room. Though the flat was rather bleak and underused, it was adequate for their visits to Cambridge in term-time. Maynard, of course, also had the rooms in King’s College which were decorated by Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell with panels depicting the ‘triposes’. The panels have recently been renovated, but are at present covered and are not on view. (M. Keynes 1975, p. 5)

E. A. G. Robinson in his ‘Life of John Maynard Keynes’ writes:

Even before his illness he always preferred to do a morning’s work in bed before getting up, and my picture will always be of him sitting propped up in bed by many pillows, either in his room in King’s or later in his flat in St. Edward Passage, a bed-table half across the bed, book, manuscripts, the Sunday papers scattered about the bed, and on chairs or tables by his bed-side. (E. A. G. Robinson 1947, pp. 30–1)

Targetti and Thirlwall (1989, p. 289) state that in 1927, when the (University) Appointment Committee in Economics elected Piero Sraffa to a four-year lectureship by unanimous vote:

Keynes also arranged accommodation in furnished rooms in one of the [King’s] College hostels; later on he provided him with a self-contained flat on the second floor of a College building reserved for fellows (17B St Edward’s Passage), where Keynes himself occupied a first-floor flat for week-ends in Cambridge with his wife Lydia. [Footnote: This was in 1937, after the death of Sraffa’s father, when he brought to England his widowed mother (who spoke fluent English) and the two lived happily together; Lydia Keynes became a great friend of Piero’s mother and had the habit of ‘dropping in’, when in Cambridge, several times a day.]

Jean-Pierre Potier (1991, p. 44) writes:

When he [Piero Sraffa] arrived in Cambridge at the end of September 1927, Keynes personally helped him to settle in, finding him accommodation in the college building (17b St Edward’s Passage) in which he himself had a flat and where he stayed with his wife Lydia for weekends in Cambridge. Even though Sraffa was not (nor would he ever be made) a Fellow of King’s College, Keynes arranged high-table dining rights for him.

And Terenzio Cozzi and Roberto Marchionatti (2001, p. 163, note 2), always on Sraffa, add:

He had to move at least twice during his life in Cambridge: he first lived in accommodation rented from King’s College, at 17b St Edward Passage, whence he moved to Trinity when he was awarded a fellowship in 1939 (his mother continuing to live at St. Edward’s Passage until her death [in 1949]).

Alessandro Roncaglia (2009, p. 22), also on Sraffa, confirms:

On his arrival in Cambridge, he [Sraffa] lived in one of King’s College hostels, then in a small college-owned flat in St. Edward’s Passage, above the one which Keynes, who at that time lived in London, utilized when in Cambridge during the week-end. Sraffa never married; though he clearly appreciated female beauty, nothing is known (and nothing came to surface in his papers) about this side of his personal life. Since 1937, when his father died, his mother lived with him in Cambridge, up to her death in 1949. Subsequently, he held a set of rooms in Trinity College’s Nevile’s Court.

And it continues:

Brought to England by the Marquess of Lansdowne in 1806, this famous picture later passed into the possession of the Grosvenor family. In 1959 the trustees of the late Duke of Westminster, faced with enormous death duties, consigned it to Messrs Sotheby’s auction rooms. Before the sale much anxiety was expressed lest this great painting, unique of its kind in England, should leave the country. After the hammer fell at the record figure of £275,000, it was announced that the purchaser, at that time anonymous, would place the picture temporarily on loan in the National Gallery. In March 1961, the Provost received a letter from the owner, Mr A. E. Allnatt, asking whether the College would accept his painting and place it in the Chapel. Mr Allnatt’s intention was to preserve it for all time in this country and to restore this major work of religious art to some great ecclesiastical building: and of all the buildings which he inspected with this end in view he felt that King’s Chapel was the most fitting. After due deliberation Mr Allnatt’s munificent offer was unanimously accepted by the Governing Body, which decided that the picture could be set up in a way which would both show it to advantage and enhance the dignity and beauty of the Chapel. […] (King’s College Annual Report, November 1961, pp. 4–5)

The Annual Report of the King’s College, Cambridge, dated November 1962 (p.1), reports that ‘On Monday 28 [May, 1962], her Majesty the Queen honoured the College by her presence on the occasion of her visit to Cambridge. She arrived by the North Gate and entered the Chapel where she was shown Ruben’s Adoration of the Magi. The Choir sang madrigals by Orlando Gibbons (Chorister, 1596) and John Bennet as she left the Chapel to cross Great Lawn. Her Majesty was graciously pleased for a number of Fellows, Research Students, undergraduates and college servants to be presented to her during the course of her visit. […] The College records with humble duty their pleasure and gratitude for Her Majesty’s presence on this her first visit to the College’.

In the Department of Applied Economics:

The first of the present authors recalls that in the 1970s and early 1980s, while teaching for the PPE degree at The Queen’s College, Oxford, undergraduates never worked, nor were taught, in the Faculty of Economics and Statistics; and even most graduate teaching took place in colleges. Colleges provide rooms, libraries, lecture rooms, halls and common rooms for all undergraduates as well as most graduates.

Harry Gordon Johnson was Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, 1949–56, and Assistant Lecturer in the University, before moving as Professor to Manchester (1956–59) and Chicago (1959–77), with a number of spells elsewhere, for instance, at the LSE (1966–74). He died in 1977, aged 53, while he was at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.

On the other hand, Luigi was increasingly concerned by the developments taking place at his alma mater, the Catholic University of Milan in particular, and by the Italian academia in general. As we said, he was always extremely careful to avoid the cumulation of teaching and salaries.

A French Department, in the south of France, where the Kaldors used to spend part of their holidays.

See Sect. 7.​7, where we reproduce a letter of Frank H. Hahn to Nicholas Kaldor, dated July 30, 1964. It concerns the Kaldor/Pasinetti Theorem and the possibility of the Dual (or Anti-Pasinetti) Theorem of Meade/Samuelson and Modigliani. We think it does discuss the paper that Hahn had prepared for publication in The Review of Economic Studies, October 1966, along with the papers already quoted above. Most probably Kaldor was not happy with it, and asked Hahn to revise it. In the meantime, Hahn had published with Robin Matthews a long survey on the theory of economic growth (see Hahn and Matthews 1964), and most probably Hahn had discussed the Cambridge Theorem with James Meade, who would participate in the controversy by taking side with the neoclassical economists. In fact, in his letter to Nicky Kaldor, dated July 30, 1964, Frank Hahn says: ‘Nor is darling Luigi [Pasinetti] right to say that the Meade case requires the isoquants asymptotic to the axis’, clearly referring to Pasinetti’s (1964) ‘A Comment of Professor Meade’s “Rate of Profit in a Growing Economy’ published in The Economic Journal. And Hahn concludes by writing: ‘Anyway, there it is. I don’t think there are any mistakes in my note (it has been read by Robin [Matthews], Jim [Mirrlees], and two L. S. E. chaps). I shall tone it down a bit simply because when it comes to it I hate rows.’ We know now which wind was blowing in Hahn’s office in Churchill College in July 1964 and beyond.

Our italics.

See Samuelson and Modigliani (1966a, p. 297); in fact, in their final draft, they omitted ‘too’ before the word ‘drastically’.