Trevor Swan

Who was Trevor Swan?

Trevor Winchester Swan was an Australian economist. He is best known for his work on the Solow–Swan growth model, published simultaneously by American economist Robert Solow, for his work on integrating internal and external balance as represented by the Swan Diagram, and for pioneering work in macroeconomic modeling, which predated that of Lawrence Klein but remained unpublished until 1989.

Swan is widely regarded as the greatest economic theorist that Australia has produced, and as one of the finest economists not to receive a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

There were two independent pioneers of Neoclassical Growth Theory: Robert Solow and Trevor Swan. Solow published “A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth” in the February issue of the QJE in 1956, and Trevor Swan published “Economic Growth and Capital Accumulation”, in the Economic Record, subsequent to Solow in December 1956.

Swan’s contribution has been overshadowed by Solow, who was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in 1987 for his contributions to economic growth.

In 2007, in an address to the American Economic Association celebrating the 50th anniversary of his 1956 contribution, Robert Solow reminded his audience that, “If you have been interested in growth theory for a while, you probably know that Trevor Swan—who was a splendid macroeconomist—also published a paper on growth theory in 1956 . In that article, you can find the essentials of the basic neoclassical model of economic growth."