ABSTRACT
George Richardson’s academic career is full of the kinds of achievements of which most academics can merely dream. His entry in International Who’s Who reveals that, after teaching economics as a fellow of St John’s College, Oxford, from 1951, he was promoted in 1969 to University Reader in Economics, a post he held until 1973. Between 1974 and 1988 he was Chief Executive of Oxford University Press and from 1989 until his retirement he was Warden of Keble College, Oxford. His expertise as an industrial economist was recognised in his appointments as a member of the Monopolies Commission and as a Member of the Economic Development Committee for the Electrical Engineering Industry. He was also a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (1973–4). His citation record, discussed later in this paper, shows his work to have been used by scholars in many countries and many disciplines. Yet, despite this, the impact of his work has been far smaller than he might justifiably have expected and, indeed, he records his disappointment in his introduction to the second edition of Information and Investment (1990: xvii). Interest in his work is growing, but his contributions remain unused by most economists and unknown to their students. This chapter is an attempt to clarify and explain the place of Richardson’s writings within the literature of economics. It has something of a reflexive dimension, for George Richardson’s contributions to economics are helpful for making sense of coordination problems and processes in the market for scholarly ideas.
