Geoffrey Colin "Geoff" Harcourt, D.Litt, A.O. (born 27 June 1931) is an Australian academic economist who is a leading member of the Post Keynesian school. He studied at the University of Melbourne and then at King's College, Cambridge.
After studying economics at the University of Melbourne he moved to the University of Cambridge, where he received his doctorate. In 1958 he moved to the University of Adelaide as a lecturer and was appointed to a chair in Economics at Adelaide in 1967. (He was a University Lecturer at Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity Hall 1964–66, on leave without pay from Adelaide). He was a University Lecturer (1982–90) and Reader (1990–98) in the Faculty of Economics at Cambridge and a Fellow and College Lecturer in Economics, Jesus College, Cambridge, 1982–98, and was President of Jesus College Cambridge, 1988–89 and 1990–92.
He has made major contributions to the understanding of the ideas of Keynes, Joan Robinson and other Cambridge economists. He has also made important contributions in his own right to post-Keynesian and post-Kaleckian theory. A review article of one of his volumes of 'Selected Essays' argues that (i) insofar as he has written on capital theory, it has been as an innovator and not as a mere raconteur, and (ii) that he has developed his own suite of post-Keynesian models – this is evident, for example, in his 1965 paper “A two-sector model of the distribution of income and the level of employment in the short-run” which is reprinted in The Social Science Imperialists: Selected Essays of G.C. Harcourt (edited by Prue Kerr).
He is married to Joan Harcourt and they have four children: Wendy Harcourt, an associate professor at the International Institute of Social Studies (married to Claudio Sardoni, a professor at Sapienza University of Rome, with two children, Caterina Sardoni and Emma Claire Sardoni); Robert Harcourt, a marine ecology professor at Macquarie University; Tim Harcourt, also an economist (married to Jo Bosem); and Rebecca Harcourt, program manager for indigenous business education at the University of New South Wales.
In 1971 he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
In 1994 he was made an Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia (AO) 'for service to economic theory and to the history of economic thought'
In 1996 he was made a Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Society of Australia.
In 2003 he was elected to an Academician (now Fellow) of the Academy of the Social Sciences in the UK.
In 2004 he was made a Distinguished Fellow of the History of Economics Society (USA).
In 2004 he was made an Honorary Member of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought.
In 2011 he received the Veblen-Commons Award from the Association for Evolutionary Economics.
In 2012 he was made a Distinguished Fellow of the History of Economics Society of Australia.
In 2015 he received the Distinguished Alumni Award of the University of Adelaide ‘in recognition of his outstanding leadership and contribution nationally and internationally in the field of economics’.
In 2015 he was made a Jubilee Fellow, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
In 2016 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of NSW (FRSN)
Parker, Robert Henry, and Geoffrey Colin Harcourt, eds. Readings in the Concept and Measurement of Income. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.
Laing, N. F. Capital and Growth; Selected Readings; Edited by GC Harcourt and NF Laing. [Harmondsworth, Eng.]: Penguin Books, 1971.
Harcourt, Geoffrey Colin. Some Cambridge controversies in the theory of capital. CUP Archive, 1972.
The Social Science Imperialists. Selected Essays. Edited by Prue Kerr, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982). Reprinted in the Routledge Library Editions Series in 2003.
On Political Economists and Modern Political Economy. Selected Essays of G.C. Harcourt. Edited by Claudio Sardoni. (London: Routledge, 1992). Reprinted in the Routledge Library Editions Series in 2003.
Post-Keynesian Essays in Biography: Portraits of Twentieth Century Political Economists. (Basingstoke, Hants: Macmillan, 1993).
Capitalism, Socialism and Post-Keynesianism. Selected Essays of G.C. Harcourt. (Cheltenham, Glos., Edward Elgar, 1995).
Selected Essays on Economic Policy. (London: Palgrave, 2001).
50 Years a Keynesian and Other Essays. (London: Palgrave, 2001).
The Structure of Post-Keynesian Economics. The Core Contributions of the Pioneers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
(With Prue Kerr) Joan Robinson. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
(with Peter Kriesler, eds) The Oxford Handbook of Post-Keynesian Economics. Volume 1: Theory and Origins. New York, Oxford University Press, 2013. Volume 2: Critiques and Methodology.
(with Joseph Halevi, Peter Kriesler and JW Nevile) Post-Keynesian Essays from Down Under: Theory and Policy from an Historical Perspective. Four Volumes. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Book chapters
Harcourt, G.C. (1982), "The Sraffian contribution: an evaluation", in Meek, Ronald (author); Bradley, Ian C. (editor); Howard, Michael C. (editor), Classical and Marxian political economy: essays in honour of Ronald L. Meek, London: Macmillan, pp. 225–275, ISBN 9780333321997. CS1 maint: Extra text: editors list (link)
Articles, a selection
Harcourt, Geoffrey Colin. "Some Cambridge controversies in the theory of capital." Journal of Economic Literature 7.2 (1969): 369-405.
Harcourt, Geoffrey C., and Peter Kenyon. "Pricing and the investment decision." Kyklos 29.3 (1976): 449-477.
Hamouda, Omar F., and Geoffrey Colin Harcourt. "Post Keynesianism: From Criticism to Coherence?." Bulletin of Economic Research 40.1 (1988): 1-33.c
Cohen, Avi J., and Geoffrey C. Harcourt. "Retrospectives: Whatever happened to the Cambridge capital theory controversies?." Journal of Economic Perspectives (2003): 199-214.
