Fred M. Taylor

Fred Manville Taylor (July 11, 1855, Northville, Michigan – August 7, 1932) was a U.S. economist and educator best known for his contribution to the theory of market socialism.

He taught in the department of economics at University of Michigan from 1892 to 1929 after receiving his Ph.D. in political philosophy there in 1888.

[1] Of a libertarian ideology, he was noted as a clear and rigorous expositor of economic theory in the partial-equilibrium lineage of Alfred Marshall.

[2] In his American Economic Association presidential address, Taylor (1929) laid out the conditions under which a socialist economy could in theory achieve an efficient allocation of resources.

[3] In this, Taylor stated principles of market socialism developed by Abba Lerner and Oscar Lange in the following decade and anticipated in mathematical form by Enrico Barone in 1908.