Kelvin Lancaster

Kelvin John Lancaster ( born December 10, 1924 in Sydney, † 23 July 1999 in New York City ) was an American economist.

Life

Kelvin Lancaster grew up in Sydney, Australia, and remained the country even after his move to the United States together. In 1943 he went as a volunteer for the Royal Australian Air Force. After the war he continued his diverse studies. At the University of Sydney, he studied geology and mathematics, but also English literature. In addition to a degree in mathematics, he earned the academic degree of Masters in English Literature.

He then developed as an employee of the Research Services of Australia economic indices for a government project. It concerned itself with economic theory and economic reached the final exam in 1953 at the University of London as an external candidate's assessment first. He got a job at the London School of Economics. There he worked on, among others, allocation of resources, the theory of consumer behavior and market structures. In 1958, his doctorate ( Ph.D. in economics ) at the University of London.

In 1961 he moved to the U.S. at the Johns Hopkins University. In 1963 he married his second wife, the lawyer Deborah Grunfeld, the widow of Yehuda Grunfeld. From 1966 he taught at Columbia University. He pursued basic research on the theory of imperfect competition.

Lancaster was elected as a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Economic Association.

Publications

• (together with Richard Lipsay ): The General Theory of Second Best In: The Review of Economic Studies. Vol 24 No. 1, 1956/1957, ISSN 0034-6527, pp. 11-32.
• Variety, Equity, and Efficiency. Product Variety in an Industrial Society. Columbia University Press, New York NY 1979 (Columbia Studies in Economics 10, ISSN 0069-6331 ).