Wassily Leontief and Input-Output Economics

The context

There is as yet no biography of Wassily Leontief. Insights into his early childhood in St Petersburg, his Russian family, his relationship to his mother, and his own family in the United States can best be gleaned by reading a short book written by Estelle Leontief. But the biography of this remarkable man and scientist – the only true genius I have had the privilege to meet in my life – remains to be written. Needless to say, this short piece has no such ambition.

I had been collecting and reading Leontief's writings in historical sequence, trying to make better sense of the work of the man who had served as my role model and motivated me to become a researcher. His meanings seemed always to remain opaque (you will probably find some of his statements below to be elliptical and abridged, if not cryptic). I knew the historical contexts and the economists before him and his contemporaries. Yet something was missing. Most interviews with him dealt with intellectual history and tried to locate his work in relation to other economists, but often in these interviews, made at different times, Leontief's comments would lead to different interpretations regarding his relationship with other economists. I felt something was eluding me in my attempt to understand the man: something about the link between his times, his own life and his attitudes.