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2021 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

1. Introduction

Author : Alex Millmow

Published in: The Gypsy Economist

Publisher: Springer Singapore

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Abstract

This chapter gives an overview of Colin Clark’s life and career. His life was informed by three themes, his love of Australia and, before that, Britain; his Roman Catholicism; and his ideological odyssey from distributivism to radical conservatism. Despite taking the economics world by storm with a mercurial ability for statistical analysis, Clark’s work has been largely overlooked in the 30 years since his death. His career was punctuated by a number of firsts. He was the first economist to derive the concept of GNP, the first to broach development economics and to foresee the re-emergence of India and China within the global economy. In 1945 he predicted the rise and persistence of inflation when taxation levels exceeded 25% of GNP. And he was also the first economist to debunk post-war predictions of mass hunger by arguing that rapid population growth engendered economic development. A figure akin to an intellectual fountain, Clark wandered through applied economics in much the same way as he rambled through the English countryside and the Australian bush. His imaginative wanderings over the main fields of economics qualify him as the gypsy economist for the twentieth century.

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next chapter Brilliant Beginnings
Footnotes
1
‘‘A Joust’ on Capital’, The Argus (Melbourne), 2 May 1955.
 
2
Clark to H. Trevor Roper, 13 March 1957, Clark Papers, UQ.
 
3
‘Colin Clark, Economics on an International Canvas’, The Times, 5 September 1989.
 
4
I am indebted to Vernon Bogdanor for this perception.
 
5
The Nation Review (Sydney), 11 April 1959.
 
6
In 1978 Clark was made a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.
 
7
Daily Telegraph (London), 5 September 1989.
 
8
David Clark memoir on his father, Colloquium at Brasenose College, Oxford, 2005.
 
9
‘Household Economics’, The Courier Mail (Brisbane), 15 September 1939.
 
10
Clark to D. Patinkin, 22 October 1980, Clark Papers, UQ.
 
11
Interview with Barbara Blackman, NLA, 1986.
 
12
D. Ironmonger obituary note on Clark, Clark Papers, Brasenose College, Oxford.
 
13
Claire Clark, an international relations scholar, and one of the extended Clark family in Australia, also considered writing the biography of her father-in-law.
 
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Metadata
Title
Introduction
Author
Alex Millmow
Copyright Year
2021
Publisher
Springer Singapore
Book
The Gypsy Economist

Print ISBN: 978-981-336-945-0

Electronic ISBN: 978-981-336-946-7

Copyright Year: 2021

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6946-7_1