Richard Kahn, Baron Kahn

Richard Ferdinand Kahn, Baron Kahn, CBE, (10 August 1905 – 6 June 1989) was a British economist.

Kahn was born in Hampstead to Augustus Kahn, a German schoolmaster and an orthodox Jew, and Regina Schoyer. He raised in England and was educated on St Paul's School, London. Kahn received a Bachelor of Arts in 1927, had been supervised by Gerald Shove and John Maynard Keynes. In 1930, he was elected a Fellow of King's College.

He worked in the Faculty of Economics and Politics from 1933, becoming Director of Studies for economics students at King's in 1947, a post he held until 1951. Instead Kahn was appointed Professor of Economics, which he stayed for over twenty years.

Arguably, Kahn's most notable contribution to economics was his principle of the multiplier. The multiplier is the relation between the increase in aggregate expenditure and the increase in net national product (output). It is the increase in aggregate expenditure (for example government spending) that causes the increase in output (or income).

Kahn was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1946 and became a Fellow of the British Academy in 1960, and was created a life peer with the title Baron Kahn, of Hampstead in the London Borough of Camden on 6 July 1965.

References

*cite web | url= http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0272%2FPP%2FRFK| title= The Papers of Baron Kahn at JANUS| accessdate= 2006-10-22