Geoff Harcourt: A Portrait (27 June 1931–7 December 2021)

Abstract

Geoff Harcourt's narrative about his connections with the Australian Economic Papers -henceforth AEP - (Harcourt, 2014) is most enlightening, as is the Interview with Dr. Tran-Nam (Harcourt, 2016) also in AEP. This Portrait for the AEP is complemented by them.

Although a ‘complete’ portrait of this remarkable man can only be gleaned from his publishing and academic activities of over 65 years, as a defender and, more importantly, an indefatigable progenitor of post-Keynesianism, his writings and editorial activities of the last seven or eight years are most telling.

However, I should emphasise the fact that by choice, Harcourt has avoided axioms, theorems and proofs of a mathematical nature - except in Harcourt (1972; but see p.13), but even in that neither theorems nor proofs are in the index to that book; this is natural for someone who thinks that ‘mathematics is a bad master’ (Harcourt, 2003, p. 70).

In his literally last publication before he, and his wife, Joan, left for Cambridge - which was their home for 28 years - Harcourt paid homage to Lorie Tarshis (Harcourt, 1982a, p. 609, ff¹) as an ‘early post Keynesian’ and referred to it as ‘a loose term designed to cover those who either were pupils of and/or worked with and/or were strongly influenced by Keynes.’ Tarshis, together with Mabel Timlin, were two Canadians whom he had great respect for as early propagators of the Keynes of the GT, although they had, via Wynne Plumptree, mastered Keynes of the Treatise, as well. In the book of Sinha and Thomas (2019, p. 99), reflecting on his past convictions, he felt able to say that ‘[he] took a post-Keynesian approach long before [he] knew what post-Keynesian economics was Harcourt (2019, p. 99).’

However, the third period in Cambridge - from 1982 to 2010 - consolidated his post-Keynesianism, in particular his allegiance to the methodology and macroeconomic analysis of Keynes, Kalecki and Joan Robinson. Harcourt's adherence to Kahn, Kaldor and Sraffa were also strengthened but they reflected his interests, particularly, in the time-scale and multiplier of macroeconomics, income distribution and returns to scale. He remained wedded to equilibrium, but not necessarily competitive, analysis. Harcourt felt, increasingly, that it was Kalecki who provided the impetus for fiscal and monetary intervention via his distribution considerations, whilst Joan Robinson gave the rationale - with her golden age analysis - the bridge between the economists and the accountants. Keynes, in his path from the Tract to the GT, via the Treatise (and the ‘Circus’), provided a much-improved argument for the fallacy of composition in a largely capitalist economy, which cemented the concepts and activism of the post-Keynesians.

However, Harcourt continued to rely on one of his earliest inspirations, Rothschild's Clausewitz-inspired oligopolistic analysis to seek a justification for desired values in market economies, tempered by the macroeconomic dominated post-Keynesianism.

Not only did Geoff Harcourt bridge the gap between accountants and economists by deftly using Joan Robinson's Golden Age arguments to measure the former's use of the latter's concept of the rate of profit, which ‘has an unambiguous meaning’ with an absence of uncertainty and expectations fulfilled; then he, imaginatively asks the following question: ‘would the answer obtained by using the accountant's measure of the rate of profit correspond with what is known, under the assumed conditions, to be the right answer, namely, that the ex post rate of return equals the ex ante one Harcourt (1965, p. 66).’ He inferred a statistical measure of income, knowing that there was no way a purely economic theoretical notion could ever be defined, even in equilibrium. In this way he was able to use the Golden Age - steady-state capital theory with growth - to bridge the gap between the practical accountant-cum-statistician with the economic theorist and avoid falling into the ‘trap’ that Hicks fell into, according to Sraffa (1961, p.305).

In numerous writings, for example in the Introduction to the following collection of Essays, Harcourt (2001) he acknowledged handsomely the influence of Noam Chomsky and Hugh Stretton in showing that ideology and analysis – especially economic analysis – were intertwined (in the context of the Vietnam war – but more generally, as well). Geoff's economics, particularly the post-Keynesian variety² was an aspect of direct action.

Geoff Harcourt was especially concerned with Sraffa's non-equilibrium, non-constant returns-to-scale arguments; that is why he devoted five essays to Sraffa in part IV of his book of 1982 which Prue Kerr edited (Harcourt, 1982 – I think, unfortunately, misnamed). Through Sraffa, and Dobb's critical attitude, impeccably studied and documented, towards all aspects of capitalism, he studied Marx; but like Joan Robinson (and Keynes) he was not a master of the political economy that Marx espoused.

Part III was devoted to Salter. Here Geoff Harcourt was on more ‘familiar’ ground. He was able to use his work on company accounts - a stepping stone towards his analysis of accountant's behaviour under Golden Age assumptions - to interpret, with sympathy Salter's technical progress function.

However, despite his admiration of Arrow and ‘reluctant’ - but genuine - liking of Hahn, he was unable to endorse the methodology and economics of the neoclassicals; perhaps this was due to his post-Keynesian adherence and interventionist stance! It was appropriate that the association for evolutionary economics awarded him (jointly with Jan Kregel) the Veblen-Commons Award, because it was Thorstein Veblen who first defined and used the word neo-classical, in a way that was reminiscent of Harcourt's critical view!

It was easier to repudiate the newclassicals, which he did in many essays that provided a powerful critique of the state of macroeconomics contemporaneously. His essay in the Harald Hagemann Festschrift, The Crisis in Macroeconomics³ (Harcourt, 2012) finds fault - justifiably - with the Lucasian doctrine-historical statements of alleged facts. Geoff Harcourt wears many hats, and one is a historian of economic thought; as a strictler of doctrine-historical facts he found Lucas and other newclassicals somewhat wanting; but the followers of the elementary statistical and mathematical methodology of what the newclassicals propagate are not deterred by violations of mere doctrine-historical facts; so, alas, Harcourt and similar scholars, by pointing out deficiencies that do not matter to these people, do not achieve their noble goals.

In 1984 Harcourt tried to approach the same problem by considering the views of the Nobel Memorial Prize winners in economics and wanted - with the help of a younger colleague - to update the study (Harcourt, 2016, p. 494). However, the ‘updating’ was effectively done by Offer and Söderberg (2016).

Geoff Harcourt lived, and died, his 90 + years, a civilized, humane, devoted, intellectually rich and committed life; he was humane as a professional economist and as a private individual, devoted to his (extended) family, to his friends, to his many teachers, to his colleagues, and to his students - as an advisor, supervisor and mentor. The intellectual richness came about, partly, as he discovered his vocation in post Keynesian Economics and was able to find its roots in Maynard Keynes, Michał Kalecki and Joan Robinson and, to a lesser extent, even though he considered them also pioneers (Harcourt, 2006, especially p. 158, ff), his Cambridge colleagues⁴, Richard Kahn, Nicky Kaldor and Piero Sraffa; other economists, based in Cambridge, Richard Stone, Wynn Godley, Mario Nuti, Maurice Dobb, John Eatwell and Richard Goodwin were also important for him. He was committed, personally and professionally, to many causes – some of them radical, all of them humane; but above all, he was passionately committed to his well-thought-out convictions.

I don't think it is an exaggeration to refer to him, in the classical sense, of being a political economist in the great tradition of Petty, Hume, Smith, Ricardo, Malthus and Marx.

He is survived by his wife, Joan - née Bartrop - of over 67 years, by their four ‘children,’ Wendy, Robert, Tim and Rebecca, the husband of Wendy, the Italian economist, Claudio Sardoni (Harcourt, 2016, p. 501) a distinguished post-Keynesian, with special interests in Kalecki), the wife of Tim, Jo Bosben (Harcourt, 2011, p. 262), and four grandchildren, Catarina, Emma Claire, Yunshi and Jhen Huei.