James Meade

James Meade was a highly influential British economist who made significant contributions to both theoretical economics and economic policy. He was awarded a Nobel Prize for his work on the theory of international economic policy and was one of the first economists to serve in the wartime Economic Section of the Cabinet Offices, becoming Director in 1946. Among his many successes in applying theory to policy are the first official national income accounts, ‘Keynesian’ employment policies and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. This comprehensive biography of Meade’s life and career, based on archival sources, covers both his achievements in theoretical economics and his contributions to the development of British and international economic policy during and after the Second World War. It will be of interest to anyone interested in the history of economics in the twentieth century.

Author Biography

Susan Howson is a Professor of Economics and Fellow of Trinity College, University of Toronto; she has also held visiting positions in the International Division of the Bank of England, Nuffield College Oxford and Wolfson College Cambridge. She has published several books on British economic policy in the 20th century, Domestic Monetary Management in Britain 1919-38 (Cambridge University Press 1975), The Economic Advisory Council 1930-1939 (with Donald Winch) (Cambridge University Press 1977) and British Monetary Policy 1945-51 (1992), and edited The Collected Papers of James Meade (3 vols, 1988) and, with Donald Moggridge, The Wartime Diaries of Lionel Robbins and James Meade and the Cabinet Office Diary of James Meade (1990). She wrote the definitive biography of Lionel Robbins (Cambridge University Press 2011) at the request of his family and edited his major articles and lectures (1997 and 2018). Besides two prizes for her early work and two senior research fellowships she was made a Distinguished Fellow of the History of Economics Society in 2019.