Profile Major Works Resources

Colin G. Clark, 1905-1989

Portrait

British statistician and economist, whose Herculean data collection efforts remain almost unparalleled to the modern day.

Colin Clark was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, obtaning his B.A. in 1928 and his M.A. in 1931. After a period lecturing in various places and a stint as an advisor in the Labour government of Ramsay MacDonald (1930-31), Clark was appointed lecturer in statistics at Cambridge University in 1931.

Inspired by Arthur L. Bowley, Colin Clark compiled the first set of modern national income accounts for the United Kingdom. He pursued collection on a world-wide scale and published, in 1939, his famous Conditions of Economic Growth - the first study to make quantitatively evident the gulf between European countries and the rest of the world. His later work concentrated on issues in development economics, notably in stressing the role of population growth - and understressing that of investment - in economic growth.

Colin Clark moved to Australia in 1938, working as an economic advisor in various position for the Queensland government.  He returned to Britain in 1952, to take up the directorship of the Institute for Agricultural Economics at Oxford.  In 1969, Colin Cark returned to Australia, spending the remaining years at Monash University in Melbourne and subsequently Queensland in 1978..

 

  

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Major Works of Colin G. Clark

  • The National Income, 1924-31, 1932.
  • The Economic Position of Great Britain, with A.C. Pigou,, 1936
  • National Income and Outlay, 1937.
  • "International Comparisons of National Income", 1938, WWA
  • "The Determination of the Multiplier from National Income Statistics", 1938, EJ
  • A Critique of Russian Statistics, 1939.
  • Conditions of Economic Progress, 1939.
  • The Economics of 1960, 1942.
  • "Public Finance and Changes in the Value of Money", 1945, EJ
  • "World Supply and Requirements of Farm Products", 1954, J of Royal Statistical Society
  • Growthmanship, 1961.
  • Economics of Subsistence Agriculture, with M.R. Haswell, 1964.
  • Population Growth and Land Use, 1967.
  • Starvation or Plenty?, 1970.
  • Poverty Before Politics, 1977.
  • "Exploding Population Myths", 1978, Land and Liberty
  • The Economics of Irrigation with J. Carruthers, 1981.
  • Regional and Urban Location, 1982.
  • "Development Economics: the early years", 1984, in G.M. Meier and D. Seers, ed, Pioneers in Development [ch.3, full]

 
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Resources on Colin Clark

 

 
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