Andrews, P. W. S. 1914-1971

Philip Walter Sawford Andrews (1914 – 1971) was an industrial economist. He spent most of his career at Oxford University as a fellow of Nuffield College, and finished his career, from 1967, as Foundation Professor of Economics at the University of Lancaster. He made his name with his detailed case study investigations of business behaviour and analysis of manufacturing firms, which he characterized as intensely competitive and oligopolistic. Andrews advocated for the use of empirical business case studies to advance industrial economics, writing in the Journal of Industrial Economics in 1952 that "empirical work on actual businesses" could help economists understand "prices in general" and generate a "workable theory" of business behaviour. He was founding editor of the Journal of Industrial Economics. From 1944 until his death in 1971 he worked and published with Elizabeth Brunner.