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Allyn Abbott Young, 1876-1929.
American economist.
Born in Kenton, Ohio, the son of schoolteachers, and raised on the South Dakota frontier. Allyn Abbot Young was educated at Hiram College in Ohio, earning his BA in 1894. After a few years working as a printer, Young enrolled at the University of Wisconsin to study under Richard T. Ely, obtaining his Ph.D at in 1902 . Young subsequently took a string of posts, starting with the US Census Bureau in 1900, then Case Western Reserve in 1902. He moved on to Dartmouth in 1904 and then Stanford, where was head of the economics department from 1906. In 1911, Young became professor of economics at Washington University (St. Louis) before moving, in 1913, to Cornell, then a bastion of Neoclassicism (Frank Knight was among his students there). War-related activities kept him Washington and New York in 1917-18.
In 1920, Young joined the faculty at Harvard University and quickly became the shining star of the department. Edward H. Chamberlin was among his students. A popular lecturer, Young had heavy teaching and supervisory burdens and thus his research suffered accordingly. Nonetheless, much of Young's ideas are hidden in other forms, notably in several textbooks (Young revised later editions of Ely's famous Outlines). Young also produced a massive stream of book reviews for the AER and other American journals, some of which became quite seminal (e.g. his reviews of Jevons, Wicksteed, etc).
In 1927, Young "escaped" to London and took up the reigns of the economics department at the London School of Economics from Edwin Cannan.
Young's best-known contribution to economics is his 1928 essay on increasing returns and growth, resurrecting Adam Smith's pet theory. Although ignored in his day, it was heavily influential on Young's student at the LSE, Nicholas Kaldor. It is often regarded as one of the precursor to endogenous growth theory.
After his untimely death from influenza in 1929, Young's shoes at the LSE were filled by his successor, Lionel Robbins.
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