William Forster Lloyd

Who was William Forster Lloyd?

William Forster Lloyd FRS was a British writer on economics.

He was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, graduating BA in 1815 and MA in 1818.

He was Greek Reader in 1823, Mathematical lecturer and Drummond Professor of Political Economy at Christ Church, Oxford.

He published several of his lectures. In his Two Lectures on the Checks to Population he introduced the concept of the overuse of a common by its commoners, which was later to be developed by the ecologist Garrett Hardin and termed by Hardin "The Tragedy of the Commons".

In his Lectures on Population, Value, Poor Laws and Rent he introduced a concise and complete statement of the concept of diminishing marginal utility, and connected demand to value, but he presents neither derivation nor elaboration. Still this contribution places him clearly in the ranks of the Oxford-Dublin school of proto-Marginalists.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1834. He died at Prestwood, Missenden, Buckinghamshire in 1852.