Dennis Robertson (economist)


Sir Dennis Holme Robertson was an English economist who taught at Cambridge and London Universities.

Biography

Robertson, the son of a Church of England clergyman, was born in Lowestoft and educated as a scholar of Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read Classics and Economics, graduating in 1912.
Robertson worked closely with John Maynard Keynes in the 1920s and 1930s, during the years when Keynes was developing many of the ideas that later were incorporated in his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Keynes wrote that at that time, working with Robertson, it was good to work with someone who had a "completely first class mind". Robertson was the first to use the term "liquidity trap". Ultimately however, differences of temperament and views about economic theory and practice led to some estrangement between the two men.
Robertson died of a heart attack at Cambridge on 21 April 1963.

Main publications