Allyn Abbott Young (1976-1929)

The Biographical Dictionary of American Economists covers American and Canadian economists and writers/thinkers with views on economics from the pre-Revolutionary period to the 1950s. All the major schools of American economic thought are represented, ranging from the Constitutional school to the Keynesian and the Chicago School. A significant number of the subjects are female, including figures such as Anna Schwartz, Mabel Timlin, Mabel Newcomer, Margaret Gilpin Reid, Rose Friedman and Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter, highlighting the role that women have played in the development of American economic thought. More generally, the dictionary includes many minor but important figures who have contributed to that development; this chapter focuses on the work of Allyn Abbott Young. His best-known single paper was his presidential address to the British Association in September 1928 on "Increasing returns and economic progress"