William Forster Lloyd (1794–1852)

This chapter provides an overview of William Forster Lloyd’s various contributions to political economy in the following areas: poor laws and population growth, the problems of commonly held property (or ‘the tragedy of the commons’), marginal utility, behavioural economics and animal intelligence. It argues that Lloyd was strongly in favour of providing support for poor relief, anticipated the law of diminishing marginal utility, and developed in embryo some of the concepts found in contemporary behavioural economics. The neglect of his work across much of the nineteenth century and then the rediscovery of different aspects of it in the twentieth century first by E.R.A. Seligman and then later by Garrett Hardin are also considered.