Joseph Lowe (died 1831) was a Scottish journalist and

political economist Political economy is the study of how economic systems (e.g. markets and national economies) and political systems (e.g. law, institutions, government) are linked. Widely studied phenomena within the discipline are systems such as labour m ...

, well known for his pioneer treatment of indexation.

Maurice Kendall Sir Maurice George Kendall, FBA (6 September 1907 – 29 March 1983) was a prominent British statistician. The Kendall tau rank correlation is named after him. Education and early life Maurice Kendall was born in Kettering, Northampton ...

called him the generally recognised "father of

index number In Statistics, Economics and Finance, an index is a statistical measure of change in a representative group of individual data points. These data may be derived from any number of sources, including company performance, prices, productivity, and ...

s". In the debate on the

Corn Laws The Corn Laws were tariffs and other trade restrictions on imported food and corn enforced in the United Kingdom between 1815 and 1846. The word ''corn'' in British English denotes all cereal grains, including wheat, oats and barley. They wer ...

in 1839, Sir Robert Peel cited the views of Lowe and Thomas Tooke, to argue against imposing a low fixed rate of import duty on corn.

Life

From

Brechin Brechin (; gd, Breichin) is a city and former Royal burgh in Angus, Scotland. Traditionally Brechin was described as a city because of its cathedral and its status as the seat of a pre-Reformation Roman Catholic diocese (which continues today ...

, Lowe attended the

University of St Andrews (Aien aristeuein) , motto_lang = grc , mottoeng = Ever to ExcelorEver to be the Best , established = , type = Public research university Ancient university , endowment ...

and

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 1 ...

. He then went into business, spending time in the Netherlands from 1792, and then London. Lowe spent a period at

Caen Caen (, ; nrf, Kaem) is a commune in northwestern France. It is the prefecture of the department of Calvados. The city proper has 105,512 inhabitants (), while its functional urban area has 470,000, From September 1815 he was tutor there to

Edward Deas Thomson Sir Edward Deas Thomson (1 June 1800 – 16 July 1879) was a Scotsman who became an administrator and politician in Australia, and was chancellor of the University of Sydney. Background and early career Thomson was born at Edinburgh, Scotland. ...

and his elder brother; Thomson later kept in touch and discussed technology with Lowe. He also employed Nathaniel Morren and others as writers.

James Mill James Mill (born James Milne; 6 April 1773 – 23 June 1836) was a Scottish historian, economist, political theorist, and philosopher. He is counted among the founders of the Ricardian school of economics. He also wrote ''The History of Briti ...

was a friend of Lowe from school days, and his son

John Stuart Mill John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, Member of Parliament (MP) and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to ...

visited Lowe in France for some weeks in 1821. Lowe was appointed lecturer in Commerce at

King's College, London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university located in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King G ...

, around 1830, at the end of his life. According to Mill's biographer Alexander Bain, Lowe was partly dependent on Mill, and was unable to retain his position.

Books

*''An Inquiry into the State of the British West Indies'' (1807) *''Naval Anecdotes: or a New Key to the Proceedings of a late Administration'' (1807), an anonymous defence of the government, is attributed to Lowe. ''The Present State of England in Regard to Agriculture, Trade and Finance'' (1822) was Lowe's major work, now noted mostly for its Chapter IX, ''Fluctuation in the Value of Money or in the Price of Commodities'', which influenced

George Poulett Scrope George Julius Poulett Scrope FRS (10 March 1797 – 19 January 1876) was an English geologist and political economist as well as a Member of Parliament and magistrate for Stroud in Gloucestershire. While an undergraduate at Cambridge, thr ...

. Otto Neurath later praised this book as an attempt at a comprehensive sketch of a

war economy A war economy or wartime economy is the set of contingencies undertaken by a modern state to mobilize its economy for war production. Philippe Le Billon describes a war economy as a "system of producing, mobilizing and allocating resources t ...

. Lowe's general conclusions were rather buoyant, allowing the British economy good prospects and the moderation of the culture being promising for the future. He supported

free trade Free trade is a trade policy that does not restrict imports or exports. It can also be understood as the free market idea applied to international trade. In government, free trade is predominantly advocated by political parties that hold econ ...

and opposed the views of

Robert Malthus Thomas Robert Malthus (; 13/14 February 1766 – 29 December 1834) was an English cleric, scholar and influential economist in the fields of political economy and demography. In his 1798 book ''An Essay on the Principle of Population'', Mal ...

. Lowe advocated indexation as applied to bonds, but also to wage contracts and land rents. His advocacy of a "tabular standard" (a precursor of the

indexed unit of account When a daily indexed unit of account or Daily Consumer Price Index (Daily CPI) or monetized daily indexed unit of account is used in contracts or in the Capital Maintenance in Units of Constant Purchasing Power accounting model, deferred payments an ...

) has been recognised as a technical advance in monetary analysis; Lowe used the terms "standard of reference" or "table of reference"; the idea itself, and the term "tabular standard" are attributed to

George Shuckburgh-Evelyn Sir George Augustus William Shuckburgh-Evelyn, 6th Baronet (23 August 1751 – 11 August 1804) was a British politician, mathematician and astronomer. Life George Shuckburgh was born on 23 August 1751, the son of Richard Shuckburgh of Limerick. ...

. The first to use weighted index numbers, Lowe in effect anticipated the Laspeyres index. The book reviewed previous work by William Fleetwood,

George Shuckburgh Sir George Augustus William Shuckburgh-Evelyn, 6th Baronet (23 August 1751 – 11 August 1804) was a British politician, mathematician and astronomer. Life George Shuckburgh was born on 23 August 1751, the son of Richard Shuckburgh of Limeric ...

and Arthur Young. A German translation appeared in 1823. Lowe innovated in his use of

constant price estimate Constant or The Constant may refer to: Mathematics * Constant (mathematics), a non-varying value * Mathematical constant, a special number that arises naturally in mathematics, such as or Other concepts * Control variable or scientific const ...

s, and the consideration of different demographic groups and their consumption, which anticipated the modern concept of

consumer price index A consumer price index (CPI) is a price index, the price of a weighted average market basket of consumer goods and services purchased by households. Changes in measured CPI track changes in prices over time. Overview A CPI is a statisti ...

Samuel Bailey Samuel Bailey (5 July 1791 – 18 January 1870) was a British philosopher, economist and writer. He was called the "Jeremy Bentham, Bentham of Hallamshire". Life Bailey was born at Sheffield on 5 July 1791, the son of Joseph Bailey and Mary Ea ...

argued against the concept of tabular standards, pointing to the difficulties arising from the need for like-to-like comparisons.

William Stanley Jevons William Stanley Jevons (; 1 September 183513 August 1882) was an English economist and logician. Irving Fisher described Jevons's book ''A General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy'' (1862) as the start of the mathematical method in ec ...

later found Lowe's pioneer work on inflation-indexed bonds "ingenious". Lowe was a proponent of such bonds, to support and buffer the developing

capital market A capital market is a financial market in which long-term debt (over a year) or equity-backed securities are bought and sold, in contrast to a money market where short-term debt is bought and sold. Capital markets channel the wealth of savers ...

. The book also opposed expansion of the

workhouse In Britain, a workhouse () was an institution where those unable to support themselves financially were offered accommodation and employment. (In Scotland, they were usually known as poorhouses.) The earliest known use of the term ''workhouse' ...

system, on grounds of expense.

Statistician

As a statistician, Lowe was one of an early group who collected economic data, and applied it in pamphlets and polemics. In fact the term current then was "political arithmetician". The larger significance of the statistical work of Lowe and Thomas Tooke is that they collected figures from the period of the

Continental System The Continental Blockade (), or Continental System, was a large-scale embargo against British trade by Napoleon Bonaparte against the British Empire from 21 November 1806 until 11 April 1814, during the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon issued the Berli ...

, of the latter part of the

Napoleonic Wars The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fre ...

. These data were then deployed in the theoretical arguments of the 1820s, dominated by

David Ricardo David Ricardo (18 April 1772 – 11 September 1823) was a British political economist. He was one of the most influential of the classical economists along with Thomas Malthus, Adam Smith and James Mill. Ricardo was also a politician, and a ...

and his doctrine on

convertibility Convertibility is the quality that allows money or other financial instruments to be converted into other liquid stores of value. Convertibility is an important factor in international trade, where instruments valued in different currencies mus ...

. There were no agreed principles on collection and use of data. Others bringing forward sets of figures were Patrick Colquhoun, Frederick Morton Eden, and George Richardson Porter. Their work carried less intellectual prestige than that of the

s. Lowe was mainly concerned with

fiscal policy In economics and political science, fiscal policy is the use of government revenue collection ( taxes or tax cuts) and expenditure to influence a country's economy. The use of government revenue expenditures to influence macroeconomic variabl ...

. He accused those who had drawn up the Bullion Report into monetary policy after the end of the Napoleonic Wars of failing to take into account recent economic growth. He argued the point quantitatively for the previous decade in ''The Present State of England'' (1822).

Journalism

Lowe turned from his career as merchant to writing, after a reply he made to a pamphlet of Henry Brougham in 1806 was a success. He wrote for ''

Lloyd's Evening Post ''Lloyd's Evening Post'', also known as ''The London Packet'' and ''Lloyd's Evening Post and British Chronicle'', was a British evening newspaper published tri-weekly in London from 1757 to 1808. Founded shortly after the ''London Chronicle'' and ...

'' and the ''

Edinburgh Review The ''Edinburgh Review'' is the title of four distinct intellectual and cultural magazines. The best known, longest-lasting, and most influential of the four was the third, which was published regularly from 1802 to 1929. ''Edinburgh Review'' ...

''. He mainly contributed to the ''

Monthly Review The ''Monthly Review'', established in 1949, is an independent socialist magazine published monthly in New York City. The publication is the longest continuously published socialist magazine in the United States. History Establishment Following ...

'', for which he wrote in the period 1805 to 1815. In reviewing a work of Davis Giddy on

bullionism Bullionism is an economic theory that defines wealth by the amount of precious metals owned. Bullionism is an early or primitive form of mercantilism.{{Citation needed, date=October 2018 It was derived, during the 16th century, from the observation ...

, he produced his own analysis, in the context of the Napoleonic Wars, of the connection of foreign exchange and shortages of bullion. He also contributed to '' The Athenaeum'' edited by

John Aikin John Aikin (15 January 1747 – 7 December 1822) was an English medical doctor and surgeon. Later in life he devoted himself wholly to biography and writing in periodicals. Life He was born at Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire, England, son of ...

Encyclopedias

Lowe wrote in the 1824 Britannica supplement on

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...

, using the article to advocate for an extension of the current term of authors' copyright. This work was reprinted in ''Remarks on Literary Property'' (1838) by Philip Houlbrooke Nicklin in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...

. In the

Encyclopædia Britannica Seventh Edition An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Oxford Dictionaries, "English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, ...

Lowe wrote on "Austria" and "Book-Keeping". He wrote also for the '' Edinburgh Encyclopædia'', on "Bullion", "Commerce", "Currency" and other topics.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lowe, Joseph Year of birth missing 1831 deaths Scottish journalists Scottish economists People from Brechin Alumni of the University of St Andrews Academics of King's College London