Fritz Machlup (/ˈmɑːxluːp/; German: [ˈmaxlʊp]; December 15, 1902 – January 30, 1983) was an Austrian-American economist known for his work in information economics.^[1] He was President of the International Economic Association from 1971 to 1974.^[2] He was one of the first economists to examine knowledge as an economic resource,^[3] and is credited with popularising the concept of the information society.^[4]

Machlup was born to Jewish parents in Wiener-Neustadt, then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father was a businessman who owned two factories that manufactured cardboard.^[5] In 1920, he began studying economics at the University of Vienna, where he received his dr.rer.pol in 1923.^[6] At Vienna, he attended lectures by Friedrich von Wieser, and participated in seminars organised by Ludwig von Mises.^[7]

In 1933, he moved to the United States, where he was a research fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation from 1933 to 1935.^[6] After the Nazi seizure of Austria in 1938, Machlup remained in the United States, and became a naturalised citizen of the US in 1940.^[8] He was the Frank H. Goodyear Professor of Economics at the University at Buffalo from 1935 to 1947,^[6] and held visiting positions at various universities around the US, including Harvard, Columbia, and Stanford.^[6]

From 1947 to 1960, he was the Abram G. Hutzler Professor of Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University, during which time he served as a research fellow at the Ford Foundation in 1957-58.^[6] He was the Walker Professor of Economics and International Finance at Princeton University between 1960 and 1971, where he also directed the International Finance Section.^[6] He was a consultant to the Treasury Department from 1965 to 1977.^[6] From 1971 till his death in 1983, he was a professor of economics at New York University.^[6] His key work was The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States (1962), which is credited with popularizing the concept of the information society.^[4]

Machlup was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1961, and the American Philosophical Society in 1963.^[9][10] He served as President of the American Economic Association in 1966,^[11] and was President of the International Economic Association from 1971 to 1974.^[2]

Shortly before his death, he completed the third in a series of ten planned volumes collectively called Knowledge: Its Creation, Distribution, and Economic Significance.^[12] Machlup also helped form the Bellagio Group in the early 1960s, and joined its direct successor, the Group of Thirty, in 1979.^[5][13]

• Die Goldkernwährung, 1925. (dissertation under Ludwig von Mises)
• "Transfer and Price Effects", 1930, ZfN.
• The Stock Market, Credit and Capital Formation, 1931. (online e-book)
• "The Liquidity of Short-Term Capital", 1932, Economica.
• "A Note on Fixed Costs", 1934, Quarterly Journal of Economics (QJE).
• "Professor Knight and the Period of Production", 1935, Journal of Political Economy (JPE).
• "The Commonsense of the Elasticity of Substitution", 1935, Review of Economic Studies (RES).
• Machlup, Fritz (15 January 1935). "The Consumption of Capital in Austria". The Review of Economics and Statistics. 17 (1): 13–19. doi:10.2307/1928519. JSTOR 1928519.
• "The Rate of Interest as Cost Factor and as a Capitalization Factor", 1935, American Economic Review (AER).
• "Why Bother with Methodology?", 1936, Economica.
• "On the Meaning of Marginal Product", 1937, Explorations in Economics.
• "Monopoly and Competition: A clarification of market positions", 1937, AER.
• "Evaluation of Practical Significance of the Theory of Monopolistic Competition", 1939, AER.
• "Period Analysis and Multiplier Theory", 1939, QJE.
• "The Theory of Foreign Exchange", 1939–40, Economica.
• "Eight Questions on Gold", 1941, AER.
• "Forced or Induced Savings: An exploration into its synonyms and homonyms", 1943, Review of Economics and Statistics (REStat).
• International Trade and the National Income Multiplier, 1943. (online e-book)
• "Marginal Analysis and Empirical Research", 1946, AER.
• "A Rejoinder to an Anti-Marginalist", 1947, AER.
• "Monopolistic Wage Determination as a Part of the General Problem of Monopoly", 1947, in Wage Determination and the Economics of Liberalism.
• "Elasticity Pessimism in International Trade", 1950, Economia Internazionale.
• "Three Concepts of the Balance of Payments and the So-Called Dollar Shortage", 1950, The Economic Journal (EJ).
• "Schumpeter's Economic Methodology", 1951, REStat.
• The Political Economy of Monopoly, 1952 (online e-book).
• "The Characteristics and Classification of Oligopoly", 1952, Kyklos.
• The Economics of Sellers' Competition, 1952 (online e-book).
• "Dollar Shortage and Disparities in the Growth of Productivity", 1954, Scottish JPE.
• "The Problem of Verification in Economics", 1955, Southern EJ.
• "Characteristics and Types of Price Discrimination", 1955, in Stigler, editor, Business Concentration and Price Policies.
• "Relative Prices and Aggregate Spending in the Analysis of Devaluation", 1955, AER.
• "The Inferiority Complex of the Social Sciences", 1956, in Sennholz, editor, On Freedom and Free Enterprise.
• "The Terms-of-Trade Effects of Devaluation upon Real Income and the Balance of Trade", 1956, Kyklos.
• "Professor Hicks' Revision of Demand Theory", 1957, AER.
• "Disputes, Paradoxes and Dilemmas Concerning Economic Development", 1957, RISE.
• "Equilibrium and Disequilibrium: Misplaced concreteness and disguised politics", 1958, EJ.
• "Can There Be Too Much Research?", 1958, Science.
• "Structure and Structural Change: Weaselwords and jargon", 1958, ZfN.
• "The Optimum Lag of Imitation Behind Innovation", 1958, Festskrift til Frederik Zeuthen.
• "Statics and Dynamics: Kaleidoscopic words", 1959, Southern EJ.
• Micro and Macro-Economics: Contested boundaries and claims of superiority, 1960.
• "Operational Concepts and Mental Constructs in Model and Theory Formation", 1960, GdE.
• "The Supply of Inventors and Inventions", 1960, WWA.
• "Another View of Cost-Push and Demand-Pull Inflation", 1960, REStat.
• "Are the Social Sciences Really Inferior?", 1961, Southern EJ.
• The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States, 1962.
• Essays in Economic Semantics, 1963.
• "Conceptos operativos y constructos mentales en la elaboración de los modelos y de la teoría", 1963, Estudios económicos. Bahía Blanca, Argentina.
• "Why Economists Disagree", 1964, Proceedings of APS.
• International Payments, Debts and Gold, 1964.
• "The Cloakroom Rule of International Reserve Creation and Resources Transfer", 1965, QJE.
• "Adjustment, Compensatory Correction and Financing of Imbalances in International Payments", 1965, in Baldwin et al., Trade, Growth and the Balance of Payments.
• "The Need for Monetary Reserves", 1966, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, Quarterly Review (BNLQR).
• "Operationalism and Pure Theory in Economics", in Krupp, editor, The Structure of Economics.
• "Corporate Management, National Interest and Behavioral Theory", 1967, JPE.
• "Theories of the Firm: Marginalist, behavioral and managerial", 1967, AER.
• "If Matter Could Talk", 1969, in Morgenbesser et al., editors, Philosophy, Science and Methodology.
• "Liberalism and Choice of Freedoms", 1969, in Streissler et al., editors, Roads to Freedom: Essays in honor of Friedrich A. von Hayek.
• "Eurodollar Creation: A mystery story", 1970, BNLQR.
• "Homo Oeconomicus and His Class Mates", 1970, in Natanson, editor, Phenomenology and Social Reality.
• "The Universal Bogey", 1972, in Preston and Corry, editors, Essays in Honor of Lord Robbins.
• "Friedrich von Hayek's Contributions to Economics", 1974, Swedish JE.
• "A History of Thought on Economic Integration", 1977, Columbia University Press.
• "Knowledge: Its Creation, Distribution and Economic Significance", Princeton University Press.
  • Vol. 1: Knowledge and Knowledge Production, 1981
  • Vol. 2:The Branches of Learning, 1982
  • Vol. 3: The Economics of Information and Human Capital, 1984
• Machlup, Fritz (November 1984). "Por qué discrepan los economistas". Estudios económicos. 3 (5/6): 69–82. doi:10.52292/j.estudecon.1984.907.

• Exponential decay – of knowledge