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SUMMARY:Central European Émigrés at the Oxford Institute of Statistics -
  Dr Agnes Simon (History)
DTSTART:20120229T120000Z
DTEND:20120229T140000Z
UID:TALK35765@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Ruth Rushworth
DESCRIPTION:War\, Economics and Politics in the 1940s\n\nDuring the Second
  World War the Oxford Institute of Statistics (OIS)\, originally founded i
 n 1935 in an effort to strengthen Oxford’s credentials as a research cen
 tre in economics\, became the intellectual home of a group of continental 
 economists and social scientists. They were all born or originally educate
 d in German-speaking Central Europe and escaped persecution and the rise o
 f right-wing regimes in their home countries. Among them were the founding
  director\, Jacob Marschak\, followed by such notable economists as the Ge
 rman F. A. Burchardt\, Kurt Mandelbaum\, E. F. Schumacher\, the Austrian J
 osef Steindl\, the Polish Michal Kalecki and the Hungarian Thomas Balogh. 
 With their native British counterparts drafted into the wartime civil serv
 ice and war effort\, the foreign-born economists researched the impact of 
 war on the various sectors of the economy and planned for post-war economi
 c reconstruction of British and the global economy. They focused on inflat
 ion and war finance\, economic controls and mobilisation of industry and t
 he post-war shape of the international monetary system. They published a c
 ollection of essays entitled The Economics of Full Employment  in 1944 tha
 t dealt with the economic implications of a regime of full employment seen
  as the chief aim in the post-war world. These activities show that this w
 as a rather unique\, and not very well-known\, episode in the history of r
 efugee academics in Britain. This seminar will look at the membership of t
 he OIS and their work while in Oxford in the 1940s in order to give an ove
 rview of their understanding of the economic problems facing Britain durin
 g and after the war.\n\nThe wartime history of the OIS is part of a much l
 arger project which is intending to merge the study of intellectual migrat
 ion\, that is the research into the movement of intellectuals and academic
 s between countries and the effects of this on their lives and work and on
  the academic discipline in which they are active\, and the history of eco
 nomics as a modern social science discipline\, together with not just its 
 theoretical development but also its professionalisation and institutional
 isation. These two broader subjects are connected by the more specific pro
 blem of how biography might relate to the history of economic thinking. Si
 mply put\, the question to be addressed here will be whether it matters if
  an economist is an émigré\, and how that immigrant status might change 
 his or her economics\, on the one hand\, and how a social science discipli
 ne\, in this case economics\, and its history\, institutionalisation and i
 ntellectual networks might be crucially influenced by the migration of its
  practitioners. This research fits easily into the recent new history of s
 ocial sciences that acknowledges the long-term changes in the boundaries o
 f academic disciplines\, and also contributes to such issues as the role o
 f the academic as an expert and commentator in wider society and the possi
 ble linkages between academic and public discourse.
LOCATION:CRASSH\, Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambridge\, CB3 
 9DT
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