How Arthur Smithies Was Lost to Australia

Abstract

This paper discusses the case of the young Australian economist, Arthur Smithies, and how he left his homeland to begin a stellar career in North America. In offering insights into the sociology of the interwar Australian economics profession, the paper suggests that even if Smithies had been offered a professorial chair at one of Australia’s universities, he was still ambitious enough to look to America, to Michigan and beyond there to Harvard, in the pursuit of his career. While Harvard is where Smithies spent the bulk of his academic career, he did not entirely forget his homeland and its economic discourse.