Eli Heckscher

Eli Filip Heckscher (24 November 1879 – 23 December 1952) was a Swedish political economist and economic historian who was a professor at the Stockholm School of Economics.

He is known for the Heckscher–Ohlin theorem, an influential model of international trade that predicts that capital-abundant countries export capital-intensive goods, while labor-abundant countries export the labor-intensive goods.

Heckscher was born in Stockholm, son of the Jewish Danish-born businessman Isidor Heckscher and his spouse Rosa Meyer. He completed his secondary education there in 1896.

He conducted higher studies at Uppsala University (from 1897) and at Gothenburg University College (in 1898) before completing his PhD in Uppsala in 1907. At Uppsala, he studied history under Harold Hjarne and economics under David Davidson. After completing his PhD, he lectured at Uppsala.

He was professor of Political economy and Statistics at the Stockholm School of Economics from 1909 until 1919, when he exchanged that chair for a research professorship in economic history, finally retiring as emeritus professor in 1945. In 1929 Heckscher founded the Institute for Economic and Business History Research as a key step in his effort to create the field of economic history in Sweden, and make it a policy-oriented science. He advanced his agenda by recruiting two other scholars, historian Bertil Boëthius (1885–1974) and economist Arthur Montgomery. Thereby the "Stockholm School" emerged and achieved a voice in government planning.

Prior to World War I, Heckscher was a social conservative who advocated for an interventionist state. During World War I, his attitudes shifted, as he became a proponent of economic liberalism and a staunch opponent of state interventionism.

Heckscher is well known for his 1935 book Mercantilism, which was translated into several languages. He is also known for multi-volume An Economic History of Sweden.

Heckscher's most important work, though, is his 1919 article “The Effect of Foreign Trade on the Distribution of Income." In this article, Heckscher provided a model explaining patterns in international trade now known as the (Heckscher–Ohlin model). Heckscher's "The Effect of Foreign Trade on the Distribution of Income" was groundbreaking but originally gained little attention for several reasons. First, Hecksher published the article in the Swedish journal Ekonomisk Tidskrift in Swedish, a language with comparatively less international access. Second, even those reading Swedish and following Hecksher may have overlooked this particular article at first since Heckscher was so prolific (he published 1148 articles and books). Finally, Heckscher was a Jew which was a factor because, just as the significance of the article became apparent beyond Sweden, the rise of anti-Semitism globally and Nazism bans on Jewish authors arguably delayed its greater recognition until after World War II. Heckscher's famous former student Bertil Ohlin at the Stockholm School of Economics (who himself succeeded Heckscher as professor there), significantly expanded on Hecksher's theory, giving it more support and a wider audience. Ohlin won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1977 long after Heckscher's death.