At the London School of Economics, a few weeks before Christmas, in 1949, the Lionel Robbins seminar was about to begin. The prestigious event was at the razor’s edge of postwar economic thought: Robbins, a giant of economics, had made the LSE a rival to John Maynard Keynes’s Cambridge, recruiting future Nobel laureates such as Friedrich Hayek, John Hicks, Arthur Lewis and the classicist turned economist James Meade.
1949年耶誕節前幾周,在倫敦政治經濟學院(London School of Economics),萊昂內爾•羅賓斯(Lionel Robbins)研討會即將開始。這場備受推崇的活動處於戰後經濟思想的最前沿:經濟學巨匠羅賓斯將倫敦政治經濟學院打造成了約翰•梅納德•凱恩斯(John Maynard Keynes)的劍橋的有力競爭對手,他還招攬了未來的諾貝兒獎得主,如佛烈德利赫•海耶克(Friedrich Hayek)、約翰•希克斯(John Hicks)、阿瑟•李維士(Arthur Lewis),以及從古典學家轉行的經濟學家詹姆士•米德(James Meade)。