Cambridge as a Place in Economics

Cambridge as a geographical reference often crops up in the characterisation of the economic theories and approaches that developed in Cambridge (UK) between the 1920s and the 1960s with the contribution of economists who did not always share the same interests, background or attitudes, but who all lived and worked – for considerable periods of time – in that particular corner of the world. In order to reconstruct the Cambridge of those years and explore the space it represented for economics we have selected a group of economists and a span of time – essentially between the two wars, with a few encroachments in the years following on the death of Keynes. Cambridge was not only a place, but also a play of magnetic forces, drawing together and driving apart, where ideas emerged from an environment formed through intense human and professional relations, a well defined cultural tradition and a way of its own of organising work and study. We present the dramatis personae and the background to their actions, and consider the characteristics of intellectual and personal communication on the basis of which we are led to define the Cambridge economists examined more as a `group' than a school.