Richard A. Radford

Richard A. Radford
Born 1919
Nottingham, England
Died 7 November 2006
Bethesda, Maryland, United States
Nationality British; American
Institution Johns Hopkins University
International Monetary Fund
Field Price theory

Richard A. Radford (1919-2006) was a British-born American economist who has served in the IMF and became widely known for his 1945 article on POW camp economics.[1]

Early life

Richard A. Radford was born in 1919 in Nottingham, England. He entered Cambridge to study Economics.

War service

When World War II broke out, Radford left the university and enlisted as a soldier in the British Army. He fought in the Allies' North African Campaign but was captured in Libya by the German forces in 1942 and spent the remainder of the war years in the Stalag VII-A prisoner-of-war camp, in southern Bavaria.[2]

IMF

After the war, he returned to Cambridge and received a bachelor's degree in Economics. In 1947, he moved to Washington, D.C. to join the International Monetary Fund, while he also started teaching Economics at the Johns Hopkins University. In his capacity as an IMF representative, Radford traveled widely throughout the world.

When he retired from the IMF in 1980, he was Assistant Director of the institution's Fiscal Affairs Department.[3]

POW camp economics

During his time in the POW camp, Radford observed the life of prisoners and their economic interactions. On the basis of these observations, he wrote, after the war ended, an article, titled "The Economic Organisation of a P.O.W. Camp," which appeared in the Economica journal in 1945.[3]

The article eventually became a staple of introductory economics textbooks,[2][4] and academic teachings as a primary example of people interacting economically,[5] of the role of middlemen,[3] and the free market at work.[6] In the view of Austrian school economist Robert P. Murphy, "there is nothing in Radford's account that conflicts with the standard economists’ story about the origin of money."[7]

Criticism

Heterodox economists have criticized Radford's text for supporting the theory of the origin of money as commodity-money[2] and for presenting an artificial situation, that of a POW camp, which, they claim, resembles a theoretical Walrasian exchange economy much more than the real-world economy.[2]

Personal life; death

Radford's first wife, Mary, with whom they had three children, died in 1977. His second marriage, which lasted 27 years, until his death, was to Margaret Radford. He died on 7 November 2006 at the Maplewood Park Place retirement home in Bethesda, Maryland, from complications after an open aortic surgery.[1]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Obituary, Washington Post, 14 November 2006
  2. 1 2 3 4 Berg, Matthew. "Was "Cigarette-Money" in World War II POW Camps a Case of Commodity Money Origination?", New Economic Perspectives, 16 April 2013
  3. 1 2 3 Woolley, Francis. "The POW economy explained", The National Post, 9 November 2010
  4. ↑ , Hubbard, R. Glenn, Anne M. Garnett, Philip Lewis, Anthony Patrick O'Brien. Macroeconomics, 3rd edition, Pearson, 2014, ISBN 9781486010233
  5. ↑ Fisman, Ray & Tim Sullivan. The Inner Lives of Markets: How People Shape Them – And They Shape Us, Public Affairs; 2016; ISBN 978-1610394925
  6. ↑ Hirshleifer, Jack, Amihai Glazer, David Hirshleifer. Price Theory and Applications - Decisions, Markets, and Information, University of California, Irvine, 2005, ISBN 9780521523424
  7. ↑ Murphy, Robert P. "Have Anthropologists Overturned Menger?", 1 September 2011
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