Robbins is famous for his definition of economics:
"Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses."[3]
A follower of William Stanley Jevons and Philip Wicksteed, he was influenced by the Continental European economists: Léon Walras, Vilfredo Pareto, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Friedrich von Wieser and Knut Wicksell. Robbins succeeded Allyn Young in the chair of the London School of Economics in 1929. Among his first appointments was Friedrich A. Hayek, who bred a new generation of English-speaking "continentals" such as John Hicks, Nicholas Kaldor, Abba Lerner and Tibor Scitovsky. Frank Knight was an American influence on Robbins.
Robbins was very familiar with the work of economists in Continental Europe. Robbins became involved in the socialist calculation debate on the side of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, and against Abba Lerner, Fred Taylor, and Oscar Lange.
The Lionel Robbins Building at the London School of Economics.
Robbins was initially opposed to Keynes's General Theory, and the evolution of his explanation of economic development has been criticised several times. His 1934 treatise on the Great Depression is an analysis of that period. Robbins saw his London School of Economics as a bulwark against Cambridge, whether it was populated by Marshallians or Keynesians. However, he was to accept the need for government intervention[4] Robbins' 1966 Chichele lecture on the accumulation of capital (published in 1968) and later work on Smithian economics, The Theory of Economic Policy in English Classical Political Economy, have been described as imprecise.[5]
Although the ascendancy of the London School of Economics is foremost among Robbins' legacies, he was a free market economist who was also greatly responsible for the modern British university system—having advocated in the Robbins Report its massive expansion in the 1960s.[6] He became the first Chancellor of the new University of Stirling in 1968. He also advocated massive government support for the arts, in addition to universities.[6]
In the latter part of his life, Robbins turned to the history of economic thought, publishing various classic studies on English doctrinal history. Robbins' L.S.E. lectures, as he gave them in 1980 (more than fifty years after he first taught the subject upon his appointment in 1929), have been published posthumously (see 1998).