Johannes de Villiers Graaff

Johannes de Villiers Graaff (also known as Jan de Van Graaff ), better known as Jannie Graaff, (19 February 1928 – 6 January 2015) was a neoclassical South African welfare economist and mountaineer. Graaff is noted for his work on optimal savings rates, contributions to the creation of the social welfare function and for his 1957 magnum opus Theoretical Welfare Economics.

Family and early life Graaff was born in Muizenberg on 19 February 1928 into a wealthy Cape Town Afrikaans family. He was the youngest of Sir David Graaff, 1st Baronet's three children, his eldest brother was Sir De Villiers Graaff, 2nd Baronet. At the age of fifteen he matriculated from Diocesan College with the second highest marks in South Africa.

In 1951 he married Lillian Clare Thomson, daughter of Sir George Paget Thomson, and had six children with her.

Academia and economics Graaff graduated from the University of Cape Town and then went on to complete his PhD in economics at St John's College, Cambridge in 1950, where he lectured economics until 1953. In 1957 he published Theoretical Welfare Economics, a revised version of his PhD thesis that pioneered the concept of welfare economics. The book had six re-prints in its first ten years and was regarded as a highly important work in the field of Welfare Economics. This included being one of the first people to officially summit the Spitzkoppen mountain in Namibia. He also wrote a number of articles on mountaineering in the South African Mountaineering Journal.

Death He died on 6 January 2015, aged 86, in Kenilworth, Cape Town after incurring an accidental head injury on Long Street, Cape Town.

Major works Fluctuations in Income Concentration, 1956, South African Journal of Economics. Rothbarth's `Virtual Pricing System' and the Slutsky Equation, 1947, Review of. Economic Studies, 15, 91–95 A Note on the Relative Merit of Taxes and Subsidies, 1947, South African Journal of Economics. Towards an Austerity Theory of Value, 1948, South African Journal of Economics. On Optimum Tariff Structures, 1949, Review of. Economic Studies. Theoretical Welfare Economics, 1957, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Equity and Efficiency as Components of the General Welfare, 1977, South African Journal of Economics.