Lionel Robbins in the context of "Economist"

Fellowship of the British Academy (post-nominal letters FBA) is an award granted by the British Academy to leading academics for their distinction in the humanities and social sciences. The categories are:

1. Fellows – scholars resident in the United Kingdom
2. Corresponding Fellows – scholars resident overseas
3. Honorary Fellows – an honorary academic title (whereby the post-nominal letters "Hon FBA" are used)
4. Deceased Fellows – Past Fellows of the British Academy

The award of fellowship is based on published work and fellows may use the post-nominal letters FBA. Examples of Fellows are Edward Rand; Mary Beard; Roy Porter; Nicholas Stern, Baron Stern of Brentford; Michael Lobban; M. R. James; Friedrich Hayek; John Maynard Keynes; Lionel Robbins; Rowan Williams; and Margaret Boden.

In economics, scarcity refers to the basic fact of life that there exists only a finite amount of human and nonhuman resources which the best technical knowledge is capable of using to produce only limited maximum amounts of each economic good. If the conditions of scarcity did not exist and an "infinite amount of every good could be produced or human wants fully satisfied ... there would be no economic goods, i.e. goods that are relatively scarce..." Scarcity is the limited availability of a commodity, which may be in demand in the market or by the commons. Scarcity also includes an individual's lack of resources to buy commodities. The opposite of scarcity is abundance. Scarcity plays a key role in economic theory, and it is essential for a "proper definition of economics itself".

British economist Lionel Robbins is famous for his definition of economics which uses scarcity: "Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses." Economic theory views absolute and relative scarcity as distinct concepts and is "quick in emphasizing that it is relative scarcity that defines economics." Current economic theory is derived in large part from the concept of relative scarcity which "states that goods are scarce because there are not enough resources to produce all the goods that people want to consume".

The Robbins Report (the report of the Committee on Higher Education, chaired by Lionel Robbins) was commissioned by the British government and published in 1963. The committee met from 1961 to 1963. After the report's publication, its conclusions were accepted by the government on 24 October 1963.

The report recommended immediate expansion of universities, and that all colleges of advanced technology should be given the status of universities. Consequently, the number of full-time university students was to rise from 197,000 in the 1967–68 academic year to 217,000 in the academic year of 1973–74 with "further big expansion" thereafter.