Ely: A Liberal Economist Defends Landlordism

摘要

Richard T. Ely was a member of that small yet growing group of advanced economists who, even during Henry George's lifetime, advocated a substantially greater role for government in the economy. After earning his baccalaureate degree at Columbia, he pursued graduate study for three years in Germany, receiving the doctorate from Heidelberg in 1879. Following a little more than a decade on the faculty of Johns Hopkins, he became director of the School of Social Science, History and Economics at the University of Wisconsin where, in 1920, he founded the Institute for Research in Land Economics and Public Utilities. Later he moved this organization to Northwestern University and ultimately to New York, changing its name, after the first move, to the Institute for Economic Research.