Frowen, Stephen F. 1923–

(Stephen Francis Frowen)

PERSONAL: Born May 22, 1923, in Remscheid, Germany; immigrated to England, 1949; naturalized citizen, 1956; son of Adolf and Anne Emma Ida (Bauer) Frowein; married Irina Minskers, March 21, 1949; children: Michael Bernard James (deceased), Tatiana Mary Anne Hosburn. Ethnicity: "White (German-born)." Education: Attended University of Cologne, 1943–44, and University of Würzburg, 1944–45; University of Bonn, diplom-volkswirt, 1948. Religion: Roman Catholic. Hobbies and other interests: Reading, music, painting, numismatics, heraldry.

ADDRESSES: Home—40 Gurney Dr., London N2 ODE, England. Office—Department of Economics, University College, University of London, Gower St., London WC1E 6BT, England. E-mail—sFrowen@btinternet.com.

CAREER: Bankers' (magazine; now Financial World), London, England, editor, 1954–60; Industrial and Commercial Financial Corporation Ltd. (now 3i), economic advisor, 1959–60; National Institute for Economic and Social Research, London, research officer, 1960–62; University of Greenwich, London, senior lecturer in economics, 1962–67; University of Surrey, Guildford, England, senior lecturer in economics, 1967–87; UNIDO, Vienna, special advisor, 1980–81; Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, professor of monetayr economics, 1987; Free University of Berlin, Germany, Bundesbank professor of monetary economics, 1987–89; University of London, University College, London, honorary research fellow, 1989–; Cambridge University, St. Edmund's College, senior research associate at Von Hügel Institute, 1991–, fellow commoner, 1999–; University of Birmingham, external professor and research associate at Institute for German Studies, 1994–2004; visiting professor at various European universities.

MEMBER: PEN Centre of German-speaking Writers Abroad, New York Academy of Sciences, Royal Economic Society, Verein für Socialpolitik, Royal Numismatic Society, Heraldry Society, Reform Club (London).

AWARDS, HONORS: Golden Badge of Honour for services to the European Forum Alpbach, Austria, 1980; Decorated Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit, Federal Republic of Germany, 1993; knighted, Pontifical Order of St. Gregory the Great, 1996.

WRITINGS:

EDITOR, EXCEPT WHERE NOTED

(Translator) Knut Wicksell, Value, Capital, and Rent, Rinehart (New York, NY), 1954.

(Translator) W.A. Jöhr and H.W. Singer, The Role of the Economist as Official Advisor, Allen & Unwin (London, England), 1955.

(And contributor, with H.C. Hillmann) Economic Issues: A Financial Debate in the Critical Years, 1954–57, Waterlow (London, England), 1957.

(Translator) Ludwig von Mises, Die Wurzeln des Anti-Kapitalismus (published in English as The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality), Fritz Knapp Verlag (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), 1958.

(Compiler and contributor, with A.S. Courakis and M.H. Miller) Monetary Policy and Economic Activity in West Germany, Wiley (New York, NY), 1977.

A Framework of International Banking, Guildford Educational Press (Guildford, England), 1979.

(And contributor) Controlling Industrial Economies: Essays in Honour of Christopher Thomas Saunders, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1983.

Business, Time, and Thought: Selected Papers of G.L.S. Shackle, New York University Press (New York, NY), 1988.

(And contributor) Unknowledge and Choice in Economics: Proceedings of a Conference in Honour of G.L.S. Shackle, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1990.

(And contributor, with Dietmar Kath) Monetary Policy and Financial Innovations in Five Industrial Countries: The UK, the USA, West Germany, France, and Japan, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1992.

(And contributor) Monetary Theory and Monetary Policy: New Tracks for the 1990s, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1993.

(And contributor, with Francis P. McHugh) Financial Decision-Making and Moral Responsibility, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1995.

(And contributor, with Jens Hölscher) The German Currency Union of 1990: A Critical Assessment, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1997.

Hayek: Economist and Social Philosopher; A Critical Retrospect, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1997.

(And contributor, with Peter Askonas) Welfare and Values: Challenging the Culture of Unconcern, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1997.

(And contributor, with Robert Pringle) Inside the Bundesbank, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1998.

(With Peter E. Earl) Economics as an Art of Thought: Essays in Memory of G.L.S. Shackle, Routledge (New York, NY), 2000.

(With Robert Pringle and B. Weller) Risk Management for Central Bankers, Central Banking Publications (London, England), 2000.

(And contributor, with Francis P. McHugh) Financial Competition, Risk, and Accountability: British and German Experiences, Palgrave Macmillan (New York, NY), 2001.

(And compiler and contributor) Economists in Discussion: The Correspondence between G.L.S. Shackle and Stephen F. Frowen, 1951–1992, Palgrave Macmillan (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor of 60 papers to collective volumes and 70 articles to professional journals. Founding member and editor, Woolwich Economic Papers, 1963–67, and Surrey Papers in Economics, 1967–77. Contributing editor, Central Banking, 2000–.

SIDELIGHTS: Stephen F. Frowen has been publishing books for many years on monetary economics and micro- and macro-economic issues. In Monetary Theory and Monetary Policy: New Tracks for the 1990s, Frowen offered a collection of thirteen papers and discussions from the First Monetary Conference of the Bundesbank Chair of Monetary Economics at the Free University of Berlin. Individual essays discuss such topics as whether a common monetary policy for Europe is an answer, what role international debt plays in global monetary policy, and how monetary policy can work together with the banking system. Economists whose essays appear in the volume include Frowen himself, along with Herbert Buscher, Elias Karakitsos, Thomas Mayer, Victoria Chick, David Laidler, and Marvin Goodfriend. Stuart Sayer, in a review of the volume for the Economic Journal, noted that many of the essays were "critical of the orthodox paradigms in monetary economics"; Sayer assessed the volume as interesting, but the quality of the essays as uneven.

A recent trend in Frowen's writing has been toward questions of ethics and social justice, in an attempt to ascertain whether private charity or public welfare programs best serve to fill the gaps between the needy and the self-sufficient. Financial Decision-Making and Moral Responsibility brought together twelve essays that were originally given at a conference at St. Edmund's College at University of Cambridge, held in 1992. The essays look at financial decision-making on both the individual and the governmental scale. Hans G. Nutzinger, writing for the Economic Journal, commented that the volume was marked by a "strong emphasis on individual behaviour and business conduct and the relative neglect of ethical issues at the level of sectoral, national, and transnational regulations."

Another book with an ethical emphasis is Welfare and Values: Challenging the Culture of Unconcern. This book, like Financial Decision-Making and Moral Responsibility, takes an interdisciplinary approach to its subject. It explores the distance between available assistance and increasing need. Reviewing the book for the Times Literary Supplement, David Willetts complained that the contributors seemed to "believe that market transactions belong to the selfish side of human nature, and that the generous side of human nature is expressed through a big welfare state." Willetts's own opinion was that "government itself can be a threat to the network of mediating structures which are the source of human meaning and satisfaction."

Frowen once told CA: "While macroeconomics, in particular monetary theory, monetary policy and banking, has been the core of my academic work, my interests in recent years have shifted more toward European economic policy and toward ethical and philosophical aspects of economics and to European economic policy, greatly influenced by the writings of G.L.S. Shackle."

Frowen's long friendship with Shackle emerges from forty years of collected correspondence, Economists in Discussion: The Correspondence between G.L.S. Shackle and Stephen F. Frowen, 1951–1992. The relationship began formally and remained that way for many years, with Frowen addressing his mentor as "Sir" or "Professor" for most of that time. The letters nonetheless shed substantial light on the private lives of the extremely shy Shackle and the meticulously polite Frowen in a way that some reviewers found remarkable. "There are very few books like this one," commented J.E. King in the History of Economics Review. For one thing, the letters, over 300 of them, cover a period of more than forty years. For another, though the collection is rather formal in tone, the discussions therein are rarely intellectual explorations of economic theory and, even though the authors are not always in agreement, they never descend to the level of professional argument or contention. Rather, the correspondence documents the academic and personal lives of two prominent economists. Alethea Hayter wrote in her Times Literary Supplement assessment of Economists in Discussion that "fellow economists [will find] a bird's eye view of structure and development in the economics departments of British universities" during the second half of the twentieth century, while "a more general readership will enjoy this account of a friendship of unfeigned sincerity between two brilliant men of goodwill."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Arestis, Philip, editor, Contemporary Issues in Money and Banking. Essays in Honour of Stephen Frowen, Macmillan (London, England), 1988.

Hölscher, Jens, editor, 50 Years of the German Mark: Essays in Honour of Stephen F. Frowen, Palgrave (New York, NY), 2001.

PERIODICALS

ACE Journal (Journal of the Association of Christian Economists), December, 1995, Esmond Birnie, review of Financial Decision-Making and Moral Responsibility, p. 33.

Cato, winter, 1999, Viktor Vanberg, review of Hayek: Economist and Social Philosopher—A Retrospect, p. 465.

Central Banking, spring, 1995, review of Monetary Policy and Monetary Theory: New Tracks for the 1990s, p. 78.

Choice, April, 1992, Z. Suster, review of Monetary Policy and Financial Innovations in Five Industrial Countries: The UK, the USA, West Germany, France, and Japan, p. 1272.

De Economist, 1990, J.A. Kregel, review of Business, Time and Thought, p. 491.

Economia, February, 2001, Peter Rosner, review of Hayek, p. 131.

Economic Books: Current Selections, spring, 1991, review of Unknowlege and Choice in Economics: Proceedings of a Conference in Honour of G.L.S. Shackle, p. 14.

Economic & Financial Modelling, spring, 1995, Marjorie Deane, review of Financial Decision-Making and Moral Responsibility, p. 37.

Economic Journal, November, 1993, M.J. Artis, review of Monetary Policy and Financial Innovations in Five Industrial Countries, p. 1599; Janu-ary, 1995, Stuart Sayer, review of Monetary Theory and Monetary Policy: New Tracks for the 1990s, p. 251; November, 1996, Hans G. Nutzinger, review of Financial Decision-Making and Moral Responsibility, pp. 1831-1832; September, 1998, review of Hayek: Economist and Social Philosopher; A Critical Retrospect, p. 1641; June, 1999, C.A.E. Goodhart, review of Inside the Bundesbank, p. F479; June, 2002, J.L. Ford, review of Economics as an Art of Thought: Essays in Memory of G.L.S. Shackle, p. F368.

Ekonomia (Journal of the Cyprus Economic Society), summer, 2005, Norbert Kloten, review of Economists in Discussion: The Correspondence between G.L.S. Shackle and Stephen F. Frowen, 1951–1992, p. 120.

Heythrop Journal, 1997, Peter Askonas, review of Financial Decision-Making and Moral Responsibility.

History of Economic Ideas, 2005, C.R. McCann, Jr., review of Economists in Discussion: The Correspondence between G.L.S. Shackle and Stephen F. Frowen, 1951–1992, p. 127.

History of Economics Review, summer, 2004, J.E. King, review of Economists in Discussion, pp. 160-164.

History of Political Economy, fall, 2003, Bradley W. Bateman, review of Economics as an Art of Thought, pp. 562-564.

International Affairs, October, 1999, Patricia Nelson, review of Inside the Bundesbank, p. 845.

Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, 1992, Manfred Teitzel, review of Unknowledge and Choice in Economics, p. 183; 1995, Joachim Starbatty, review of Business, Time and Thought, p. 503.

Journal of Comparative Economics, August, 1994, Thomas F. Cargill, review of Monetary Policy and Financial Innovations in Five Industrial Countries, p. 138.

Journal of Economic Literature, December, 1990, review of Unknowledge and Choice in Economics, p. 1781; March, 1993, review of Monetary Policy and Financial Innovations in Five Industrial Countries, p. 304; September, 1994, review of Monetary Theory and Monetary Policy, p. 1307; September, 1995, review of Financial Decision-Making and Moral Responsibility, p. 1399; December, 1997, review of The German Currency Union of 1990: A Critical Assessment, p. 2135; March, 1998, p. 291; June, 1998, review of Hayek, p. 1007; March, 1999, review of Inside the Bundesbank, p. 250; June, 2002, review of Financial Competition, Risk, and Accountability: British and German Experiences, p. 620.

Journal of Economics (Zeitschrift fuer Nationaloekonomie), 1991, K. Milford, review of Unknowledge and Choice in Economics, p. 314; 1995, Katrin Wesche, review of Monetary Theory and Monetary Policy, p. 211.

Journal of Markets & Morality, 2005, Ricardo F. Crespo, review of Economists in Discussion, p. 560.

Journal of Social Policy, October, 1998, Martin Hewitt, review of Welfare and Values: Challenging the Culture of Unconcern, p. 569.

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 1957, Marjorie Deane, review of Economic Issues.

Kredit und Kapital, 1995, Hildegard Breig, review of Monetary Policy and Financial Innovations in Five Industrial Countries, p. 314.

Kyklos, winter, 1995, Sadananda Prusty, review of Monetary Theory and Monetary Policy, p. 606.

Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies, June, 1990, Alexander Shand, review of Business, Time, and Thought: Selected Papers of G.L.S. Shackle, p. 203; June, 1991, Martin Currie, review of Unknowledge and Choice in Economics, p. 214; September, 1995, J.A. Kregel, review of Monetary Theory and Monetary Policy, p. 329; December, 1995, Richard Harrington, review of Financial Decision-Making and Moral Responsibility, p. 441.

Modern & Contemporary France, July, 1992, Jan Windebank, review of Monetary Policy and Financial Innovations in Five Industrial Countries, p. 70.

Reference and Research Book News, November, 1997, review of review of The German Currency Union of 1990, p. 84; May, 1998, review of Hayek, p. 61; November, 1998, review of Inside the Bundesbank, p. 108; November, 2001, review of Financial Competition, Risk, and Accountability, p. 114.

Review of Political Economy, 1990, J.L. Ford, review of Business, Time and Thought, p. 369.

Revista Empresa Y Humanismo, 2005, Ricardo F. Crespo, review of Economists in Discussion, p. 179.

Scottish Journal of Political Economy, May, 1992, Gavin C. Reid, review of Unknowledge and Choice in Economics, p. 235.

Southern Economic Journal, April, 1991, Allan Persky, review of Unknowledge and Choice in Economics, p. 1206.

Tablet, March, 1996, Michael Phelan, review of Financial Decision-Making and Moral Responsibility.

Times Literary Supplement, June 13, 1997, Harold James, review of The German Currency Union of 1990, p. 5; August 14, 1998, David Willetts, review of Welfare and Values, p. 25; September 24, 2005, Alethea Hayter, Economists in Discussion, p. 28.

Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, 1959, James Lanner, review of Economic Issues, p. 87.

ONLINE

H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, http://www.h-net.org/ (June, 1998), review of Hayek.