Richard Kahn, Baron Kahn

Richard Ferdinand Kahn, Baron Kahn, CBE, FBA (10 August 1905 – 6 June 1989) was a British economist.

Life and career

Kahn was born in Hampstead into the orthodox Jewish family of Augustus Kahn, inspector of schools and former German schoolmaster, and Regina Schoyer. He was brought up in England and educated at St Paul's School, London. He attended King's College, Cambridge. Kahn took a 1st in Mathematics, Part I, at Cambridge, followed in 1927 by a 2nd in Physics in the Natural Sciences tripos. Taught economics by Gerald Shove and John Maynard Keynes from 1927 to 1928, he gained a 1st in Economics, Part II, in 1928. In 1930, he was elected a Fellow of King's College.

Kahn worked in the Faculty of Economics and Politics from 1933. He became Director of Studies for economics students at King's College in 1947, a post he held for four years. Kahn was appointed professor of economics in 1951, and succeeded Keynes as Bursar of King's College. He served in numerous other government and agency positions, such as the research and planning division of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe in 1955 and the UK National Coal Board in 1967. His most notable contribution to Keynesian economics was his principle of the multiplier. The multiplier is the relation between the increase in aggregate expenditure and the increase in net national product (output). His findings on the multiplier were first published in his 1931 article, "The Relation of Home Investment to Unemployment". There has been extensive debate on whether Kahn's thinking on the multiplier was foreshadowed or aided by the work of other economists such as Lyndhurst Giblin.

Public life and politics Kahn was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1946 and became a Fellow of the British Academy in 1960, and was created a life peer with the title Baron Kahn, of Hampstead in the London Borough of Camden on 6 July 1965. He was sympathetic to the Gaitskellite wing of the Labour Party, and in the 1950s was part of an expert group that advised Gaitskell on economic policy. Like Gaitskell (but unlike most Gaitskellites), he opposed Britain's attempts to join the European Economic Community (EEC), and in 1971 was one of 100 economists who signed a letter to The Times claiming that the economic effects of EEC membership would be unfavourable to Britain. Despite his anti-EEC credentials, Kahn nevertheless joined the staunchly European Social Democratic Party (SDP) upon its foundation in 1981, and sat on that party's benches in the House of Lords.

Selected works