Cairnes, John Elliot

Related Category: Economics: Biographies

(kârnz), 1823–75, Irish economist, a follower of John Stuart Mill. His Slave Power (1862), a defense of the North in the American Civil War, made a great impression in England. He has written about noncompeting groups in the labor market and is known for his distrust of mathematical economics. Among his works are The Character and Logical Method of Political Economy (1857) and Some Leading Principles of Political Economy Newly Expounded (1874).

See A. Weinberg, John Elliot Cairnes and the American Civil War (1970).