Robert Rowthorn

Robert Rowthorn FAcSS FLSW (born 20 August 1939) is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge and has been elected as a Life Fellow of King’s College.

He is also a senior research fellow of the Centre for Population Research at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford.

Rowthorn was born in 1939 in Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales.

He attended Jesus College, Oxford reading mathematics.

He took a post-graduate research fellowship at Berkeley again in mathematics.

He returned to Oxford and switched to economics, taking a two-year B.Phil.

He then got a job at Cambridge as an economist.

He was an editor of the radical newspaper The Black Dwarf.

He has authored many books and academic articles on economic growth, structural change and employment.

His work has been influenced by Karl Marx and critics of capitalism.

He has worked as a consultant to various UK government departments and private sector firms and organisations, and to international organisations such as the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the International Labour Organization.

Many of his publications have a Marxist slant.

Rowthorn has been described by Susan Strange as being one of the few Marxists (another being Stephen Hymer) who is read in business schools.

Among other things, he has identified the so-called paradox of costs, whereby higher real wages lead to higher profit margins.

In 2011, Rowthorn was elected a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales.