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Edith PenroseBritish economist
Date of Birth: 15.11.1914
Country:  Great Britain |
Content:
Biography of Edith Penrose
Edith Elura Tilton Penrose, also known as Edith Penrose, was born in 1914 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She received her bachelor's degree in 1936 from the University of California at Berkeley. In the same year, she got married to David Burton Denhardt, who tragically passed away just two years later during a hunting incident. Edith was left widowed with a young son.
Education and Career
After her husband's death, Edith moved to Baltimore where she obtained a master's degree and later a doctoral degree from Johns Hopkins University. In 1945, Edith remarried Ernest F. Penrose, a British economist and writer who had been her professor at Berkeley. She began working at the American Embassy in London and later became a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University.
Contributions
In 1951, Edith published her first book, 'The Economics of the International Patent System'. In 1959, she published a groundbreaking work in which she attempted to unravel one of the most complex puzzles in economics - why do firms diversify their activities? She proposed that firms engage in diversification because the market fails to correctly assess the value of new products, technologies, and ideas. She believed that establishing their own production and sales systems would solve this problem.
Recognition and Later Life
Edith gained recognition and attention from prominent economists with her book 'The Theory of the Growth of the Firm'. It is known that Edith and her husband had to take a long academic leave and leave the country due to political disagreements. During this period, they worked at the Australian National University and in Baghdad University in Asia. Edith extensively researched oil companies during her time in Baghdad and published a book titled 'The Large International Firm in Developing Countries: The International Petroleum Industry' in 1968.
In 1970, she released 'New Orientations: Essays in International Relations', and her next book, 'Iraq: International Relations and National Development', was published in 1978. At the age of 64, she became a professor of political economy at the Institut Europeen d'Administration des Affaires in Fontainebleau, France. After her husband's death in 1984, Edith returned to the UK and settled in Cambridgeshire.
On October 11, 1996, news outlets 'The Guardian' and 'The Independent' reported the death of Edith Penrose.
