Herbert J. Davenport | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 10 August 1861 Wilmington, Vermont, U.S. |
| Died | 15 June 1931 (age 69) New York City, U.S. |
| Academic background | |
| Education | University of Chicago (PhD) |
| Doctoral advisor | Thorstein Veblen James Laurence Laughlin |
| Influences | |
| Academic work | |
| Institutions | University of Chicago University of Missouri |
| Notable ideas | American Psychological School Critique of theAustrian School andNeoclassical economics |
Herbert Joseph Davenport (August 10, 1861 – June 15, 1931[1]) was an Americaneconomist, educator and author.[2][3] He was a member of theAmerican Psychological School alongsideFrank A. Fetter andThorstein Veblen.
Born inWilmington, Vermont, Davenport was the son ofCharles N. Davenport, a prominent attorney and Democratic Party leader.[4] He studied at theUniversity of Chicago for a year or so underThorstein Veblen, with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. His studies were apparently motivated, like many other revolutionary political economists of his time, by a desire to find the flaws in socialism.[5]
Following his degree at Chicago on 1898, Davenport became a high school principal before returning to Chicago as a faculty member. He began his formal career as assistant professor at theUniversity of Chicago in 1902. During his previous 41 years, he had attendedHarvard Law School, theUniversity of Leipzig,Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques inParis, theUniversity of South Dakota, and the University of Chicago. He moved to theUniversity of Missouri to become department head and first dean of the College of Business in 1908. In 1916, he transferred toCornell, where he finished his academic career. He also made and lost a fortune in business, largely in land speculation.
The Herbert J. Davenport Society is theUniversity of Missouri College of Business's alumni organization. He died on June 15 1931 at age 69
An admirer ofThorstein Veblen, Davenport carved a unique niche in the world of academic economics, avoiding the Institutionalist approach inspired by Veblen, and incorporating insights from theAustrian andLausanne economists. For Davenport, the entrepreneur was central to market activity. He accepted the Austrian concept ofopportunity cost (found in the work ofFriedrich von Wieser) but rejected the neoclassical conception of marginal utility. He was a relentless critic ofAlfred Marshall, his last book being a critique ofThe Economics of Alfred Marshall (1935).[6][7] In that book, he criticized Marshall as a classical economist who subscribed to the real cost doctrine and his assumption of homogeneity of different costs.
Davenport, along withFrank A. Fetter, comprised, as Fetter put it, a distinct, if small, school of economics: theAmerican Psychological School. Frank Knight, a student and admirer of Davenport's, did not succeed in imprinting many of Davenport's ideas onto theChicago School neoclassical tradition.
Davenport wrote numerous articles which were published in such prestigious economic journals as theJournal of Political Economy, theQuarterly Journal of Economics and theAmerican Economic Review.
He also wrote several major books. His first article, written while an undergraduate in South Dakota, was "The Formula of Sacrifice" (1894), an exploration of the concept of subjective opportunity cost. Viewed in retrospect, his "Outlines of Economic Theory" was a preliminary version of his 1908Value and Distribution (1908).[8] The latter was a full-fledged critical examination of the major economic doctrines of classical and early neoclassical thought. Among other things, it contained critiques ofmarginal utility, of the contemporaryAustrian theories ofcapital and cost, and ofFrank Fetter's theory of market interest.
While he had a penchant for criticizing the emergingneoclassical economics, most of his criticism was leveled at vestiges ofclassical economics, such as the doctrine of real cost and the tripartite division of factors of production, which had led some classical economists to advocate a tax on land value. Although one biographer and student saw him as a reformer (Homan), another lamented the absence of real reformist ideas and even of the awareness of the need to follow criticism with clear statements about what was right and how it could be achieved (Frank Knight). His relentless criticism is probably the main reason that his works have, in general, been neglected by historians of economic thought.
The extensive citations and treatment of economic others ideas in this book were omitted in his later bookThe Economics of Enterprise (1914). This book was a tightly-knit theory of price from the entrepreneur point of view (to be contrasted with the "social" point of view). In that book, he worked out an image of economic interaction in which all phenomena was interpreted through the eyes and minds of entrepreneurs. This theory was complemented by a theory ofcredit andmoney for the era of free enterprise in banking ("loan fund theory of capital").
As a teacher, he was an artist. "He never lectured in any conservative way. He pitted his students against one another. He subjected them to grilling cross-examination capped by the decisive point and apt illustration, punctuated by satirical amusement toward the inept and the unprepared."[5] Perhaps the best reflection on Davenport as a person comes from the fact that for many years, he used his savings to pay friends in South Dakota who had made real estate investments through him in the early 1890s.[9]
Articles, a selection:
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