Gardiner Coit Means | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1896-06-08)June 8, 1896 |
| Died | February 15, 1988(1988-02-15) (aged 91) |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Harvard University[1] |
| Academic work | |
| School or tradition | Institutional economics |
| Notable ideas | Administered pricesCollective capitalism |
Gardiner Coit Means (June 8, 1896[2] – February 15, 1988)[3] was an Americaneconomist who worked atHarvard University, where he met lawyer-diplomatAdolf A. Berle. Together they wrote the seminal work ofcorporate governance,The Modern Corporation and Private Property. During theNew Deal, Means served as an economic adviser toFranklin D. Roosevelt andHenry A. Wallace.
Means followed theinstitutionalist tradition of economists. In 1934 he coined the term "administered prices" to refer to prices set by firms themselves, as contrasted with market prices, set for commodities like corn and oil in impersonal markets. InThe Corporate Revolution in America (1962) he wrote:
"We now have single corporate enterprises employing hundreds of thousands of workers, having hundreds of thousands of stockholders, using billions of dollars' worth of the instruments of production, serving millions of customers, and controlled by a single management group. These are great collectives of enterprise, and a system composed of them might well be called "collective capitalism."
Means argued that where an economy is fueled by big firms it is the interests ofmanagement, not thepublic, that governsociety.
