Not So Dull? Simon Gray and Giffen Behaviour

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It has been argued that The Happiness of States by Simon Gray contains a precursor analysis of a Giffen good. That reading, however, produces a misleading account of the significance of Gray’s text within a teleological history of Giffen behaviour. After providing some new information for Gray’s biography, this article shows that he was one of the few nineteenth-century British political economists who argued that speculators did not necessarily play a beneficial role in food markets. It is also shown how Gray’s text has been read to install him as a pioneer of the twentieth-century Giffen good.