Henry Dunning Macleod
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Henry Dunning Macleod (31 March 1821 – 16 July 1902) was a Scottish economist and lawyer.


Life

Henry Dunning Macleod was born in
Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...
, and educated at Eton,
Edinburgh University The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the town council under the authority of a royal charter from King James VI in 1582 and offi ...
, and
Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any ...
, where he graduated in 1843. In 1843 Macleod was entered as a student at
Inner Temple The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, commonly known as the Inner Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court and is a professional association for barristers and judges. To be called to the Bar and practice as a barrister in England and Wa ...
, travelled in Europe, and in 1849 was called to the English bar. Macleod was a director of the Royal British Bank, after the failure of which he was one of those convicted of conspiracy to misrepresent the bank's financial position, and was sentenced to 3 months imprisonment. He was employed in Scotland on the work of poor-law reform, and devoted himself to the study of economics. In 1856 he published his ''Theory and Practice of Banking'', in 1858 ''Elements of Political Economy'', and in 1859 ''A Dictionary of Political Economy''. In 1873 his ''Principles of Economical Philosophy'' appeared, and in 1889 his ''The Theory of Credit''. Between 1868 and 1870 he was employed by the government in digesting and codifying the law of bills of exchange. In 1896, he published ''The History of Economics''.


Contributions

Macleod's principal contribution to the study of economics consists in his work on the theory of
credit Credit (from Latin verb ''credit'', meaning "one believes") is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt) ...
, to which he was the first to give due prominence. A major feature of his work was to create a theory of money starting from a theory of credit instead of the usual reverse path. In ''The Theory of Credit'' he says: Macleod's Credit Theory of Money influenced Alfred Mitchell-Innes and later work of the modern Chartalists. John R. Commons considered Macleod's work to be the foundation of
Institutional economics Institutional economics focuses on understanding the role of the Sociocultural evolution, evolutionary process and the role of institutions in shaping Economy, economic Human behavior, behavior. Its original focus lay in Thorstein Veblen's instin ...
. In his 1954 ''History of Economic Analysis'',
Joseph Schumpeter Joseph Alois Schumpeter (; February 8, 1883 – January 8, 1950) was an Austrian political economist. He served briefly as Finance Minister of Austria in 1919. In 1932, he emigrated to the United States to become a professor at Harvard Unive ...
mentions Macleod: Then, he adds a footnote: Then, Schumpeter concludes: It was Macleod who coined in 1857 the term " Gresham's law". For a judicious discussion of the value of Macleod's writings, see an article on "The Revolt against Orthodox Economics" in the ''Quarterly Review'' for October 1901 (no. 388).


Bibliography

* Macleod, Henry Dunning (1855). ''The Theory and Practice of Banking''. Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. * Macleod, Henry Dunning. (1858). ''The Elements of Banking''. Longmans. * Macleod, Henry Dunning (1859). ''A Dictionary of Political Economy,'' Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans * Macleod, Henry Dunning (1873). ''Principles of Economical Philosophy, Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer'' * Macleod, Henry Dunning (1889). ''Theory of Credit, Longmans, Green, and Company'' *


See also

*
List of multiple discoveries Historians and sociologists have remarked the occurrence, in science, of " multiple independent discovery". Robert K. Merton defined such "multiples" as instances in which similar discoveries are made by scientists working independently of each ...
*'' A History of Banking in all the Leading Nations'' (1896), to which Macleod contributed the chapters in vol. 2 on the history of banking in Great Britain. * Catallactics


References


Further reading

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


External links

*
''Gresham's Law'' by George Selgin.
* *
The Online Books page
on Henry Dunning Macleod * {{DEFAULTSORT:Macleod, Henry Dunning 1821 births 1902 deaths Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Alumni of the University of Edinburgh People educated at Eton College Scottish economists