Gottfried Haberler

Who was Gottfried Haberler?

Gottfried von Haberler was an Austrian-American economist. He worked in particular on international trade. One of his major contributions was reformulating the Ricardian idea of comparative advantage in a neoclassical framework, replacing the outdated labor theory of value with the modern opportunity cost concept.

Haberler was born in Austria-Hungary in 1900, and was educated in the Austrian School of economics. In 1936 he moved to the United States, joining the economics department at Harvard University. There he worked alongside Joseph Schumpeter.

Haberler's two major works were Theory of International Trade and Prosperity and Depression.

In 1957 the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade commissioned a report on the terms of trade for primary commodities, and Haberler was appointed Chairman. The report found that there was a decline in the terms of trade for primary producers, since 1955 commodity prices were said to have fallen by 5%, while industrial prices rose by 6%. Haberler's report seems to prefigure the report written by Raúl Prebisch for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in 1964, but when Prebisch's report came out Haberler denounced it. His particular disagreement was with the idea that there was a systematic long-term decline in the terms of trade.