John Mars (economist)

John Mars , until 1925 Hans Materschläger , then Hans Mars , pseudonym Rudolf Gessner (born May 18, 1898 in Untersiebenbrunn near Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; died September 17, 1985 in Baden near Vienna ) was an Austrian economist.

Life and activity

Mars studied first in Vienna and then in England at the University of Bristol . From the winter semester 1925/1926 he was enrolled at the law faculty of the University of Vienna , where he also received his doctorate in 1931.

From 1926 Mars was employed by the Chamber for Workers and Employees for Vienna, where he a. a. worked as a consultant for ergonomics and operational rationalization. He interrupted this work in 1931 and 1932 for a study visit to the University of Chicago financed by funds from the Rockefeller Foundation . Mars, who was a member of the Social Democratic Labor Party, lost his position in the Chamber a few months after the outbreak of the Austrian Civil War in June 1934. In the same year he emigrated to Great Britain.

In Great Britain, Mars was initially unable to achieve a secure position. Until 1935 he held an assistant position at the University of Birmingham, again financed by the Rockefeller Foundation.

Mars spent the years between 1937 and 1944 at Oxford University - until 1940 as a research student at New College. In 1941 he taught economics and statistics as a tutor at various colleges before taking up a position as senior lecturer at Nuffield College . In 1946 he received a lecturer position at Trinity College in Dublin . In 1948 he moved to Leeds University as a senior lecturer .

From 1949 to 1962 Mars was a Reader in Economics at Manchester University . At the beginning of 1962 he returned to Austria and worked until 1970 for the United Nations as a regional adviser in various African countries and as a senior member of the Institute for Development and Planning in Africa.

Before his emigration, Mars dealt with socio-political issues at the economic and business level and with problems of work organization, which he approached from a trade union perspective. In 1930 he published a detailed review article on PH Douglas' study Wages and the Family in the Archives for Social Science and Social Policy , in which he discussed the draft of an American minimum wage system, the core of which was the idea of ​​establishing wage supplements for employees depending on their marital status and family size . In such a compensation fund, however, he saw the danger of weakening the power of the trade unions, which is why he instead demanded that the fund be made up of equal numbers of representatives from employers and employees.

In a lecture in 1930 on the attitude of the trade unions towards measures of individual company social policy, Mars examined the motives of employers to provide company social benefits. In this context he went u. a. the question of whether the workers could be reconciled with the capitalist economic system through capital and profit sharing and whether this employee participation would represent a suitable addition to the wage policy. He also explained the formal and material elements of company social benefits and expressed his conviction that a social company policy would lead to increased performance and avoidable production losses.

With the three-volume work Union Manual of Pieceworking , Mars presented the first systematic work in this field written by the union in 1931. With this comprehensive presentation of the economic and other aspects of piecework wages, the details of the standard time and earnings calculation and a new system of terms, he tried to overcome and objectify the union slogan "Accord wage is murder wage". In addition, he formulated contractual provisions in the respective chapters that could serve as a basis for negotiations for the employee representatives dealing with questions of piecework.

In his country of emigration, Great Britain, Mars found no connection with the local trade union movement. Instead, during his years there, he dealt more and more with consumer economics issues, but as a result of being forced to constantly familiarize himself with new areas of responsibility, he was only marginally active as a journalist. In an essay on "Credit Costs and Redemption Practices in Hire Purchase" (1956), he dealt with the increasing importance of installment loans in the purchase of durable consumer goods. He criticizes the non-transparent business practices of the installment banks for consumers and recommended consumer strikes as a last resort against immoral installment credit agreements.

After his return to Austria he turned to a new field of work, developing country research. In 1965 he wrote a report on the economic framework conditions of industrialization in Israel for the UN Economic Commission for Africa. Two years later, with his book African Economic Integration , he presented an analysis of the possibilities for shaping a new development policy in Africa that went beyond a purely economic perspective and, in particular, took into account the political constellations during the Cold War.

Central points of the "program of action" proposed by him, which in some points can be regarded as a forerunner of the 1980 report of the North-South Commission headed by W. Brandt, were (l) the restructuring of the economic structure in the economic and industrial sector as well as the expansion infrastructure, (2) the reversal of the process of absolute as well as relative impoverishment and the like. a. through income redistribution measures and increased development aid from industrialized countries, (3) reducing population growth as a basis for eliminating unemployment and (4) horizontal and vertical economic integration, d. H. the expansion of trade links in both south-south and north-south direction.

As a result of its advanced age, however, Mars was no longer able to develop any greater scientific impact in the field of development economics after this publication.

Fonts

• "Der Familienlohn", in: Archive for Social Science and Social Policy , Vol. 64, Tübingen 1930, pp. 179-189.
• A Report to the Executive Secretary on Investigations Into the Economics and the Institutional Framework of Industrialization in Israel , 1965.
• African Economic Integration: Facts and Prospects , 1967.
• Population Explosion, Unemployment, Inflation, Growth of Real Income Per Head and Its Unequal Distribution in Africa: An Essay in the Formulation of Some Indispensable Government Policies for Accelerated Development , 1971.

literature

• Hans Ulrich Esslinger: Mars, John. In: Harald Hagemann , Claus-Dieter Krohn (ed.): Biographical handbook of German-speaking economic emigration after 1933. Volume 2: Leichter branch. Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11284-X , pp. 416-418.