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Faculty of Economics

Robin Matthews: 16 June 1927 – 19 June 2010

Robin Matthews was an Oxford-educated economist who spent most of his academic career as a member of our Faculty from the early 1950s onwards. He moved to Oxford to take up the Drummond Professorship at Oxford, in succession to John Hicks, from 1965-75, and returned to Cambridge as Master of Clare College from1975 to 1993. In 1980 he succeeded Brian Reddaway as Professor of Political Economy (Marshall’s Chair).

Robin returned to the Faculty at the height of Mrs Thatcher's enthusiasm for the monetarist views of Milton Friedman. Eager to ensure that undergraduates should be exposed to all schools of thought, even those he disagreed with, he gave a series of lectures which were bluntly entitled Monetarism. These presented a fair-minded, if critical, exposition remarkable for their prescience in stressing the distinction between the traditionalist views of Friedman himself, and the much more radical position (the precursor of 'New Classical Economics') which was being put forward by Lucas and others.

Amongst Robin’s eminent works, many generations of Economics Tripos students will recall his Cambridge Economics Handbook on The Trade Cycle (1958) and the famous survey on the theory of economic growth, co-authored with Frank Hahn, which was published in the Economic Journal in 1964. A much cited and admired article was his 1968 paper in the Economic Journal on why the UK had had full employment since the Second World War. It was a fine example of his ability to combine economic theory with an understanding of historical and political processes. In 1982 he published a major treatise with Charles Feinstein and John Odling-Smee on the causes of growth in the UK from 1856 to 1973. He described his later empirical work as economic history written in the style of an economist.

Amongst Robin’s eminent works, many generations of Economics Tripos students will recall his Cambridge Economics Handbook on The Trade Cycle (1958) and the famous survey on the theory of economic growth, co-authored with Frank Hahn, which was published in the Economic Journal in 1964. A much cited and admired article was his 1968 paper in the Economic Journal on why the UK had had full employment since the Second World War. It was a fine example of his ability to combine economic theory with an understanding of historical and political processes. In 1982 he published a major treatise with Charles Feinstein and John Odling-Smee on the causes of growth in the UK from 1856 to 1973. He described his later empirical work as economic history written in the style of an economist.