Opinions about the Swedish economist Gustav Cassel (1866-1945) have varied over time.
Before the First World War, he made himself known as a progressive liberal who advocated social reform and trade unions as means to increase labour productivity and economic growth.
In the 1920s, he was considered to be “the most influential leader of our science” (Schumpeter 1954: 1154). He advised the League of Nations and national governments on monetary policy issues, and attracted worldwide attention as a lecturer and writer of textbooks, pamphlets and articles. In the wake of the Great Depression, Cassel fell out of favour with public opinion, due to his opposition to the “new economics” of the Stockholm School, Keynes and other advocates of fiscal activism. His image shifted from that of a skilful popularizer of complex theory and “pragmatic truths” to that of a conceited vulgarizer, if not plagiarizer of Walras. In the 1980s, Cassel was reappraised as a “pioneer” of growth theory, monetary targeting, the notion of revealed preferences, and other concepts. Since then, many of these claims have been disputed or downsized.