Meade, James Edward

Meade, James Edward, 1907–95, British economist, studied at Oxford and Cambridge. Strongly influenced by John Maynard Keynes, Meade worked at the League of Nations (1937–40) and was chief economist (1945–47) in Britain's first Labour government before he accepted professorships at the London School of Economics (1947–57) and Cambridge Univ. (1957–68). An advocate of labor-capital partnership, he was an adviser to England's short-lived centrist Social Democratic party during the 1980s. He was known for his rigorous analyses of the ways that a government's policies on taxes, spending, and interest rates affect trade and the ways that trade policies, in turn, affect economic welfare. Meade's many books include The Theory of International Economic Policy (2 vol., 1951–55) and Principles of Political Economy (4 vol., 1965–76). His work on international trade earned him the 1977 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, which he shared with Bertil Ohlin.

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Meade, James Edward 

Born June 23, 1907. English economist. Specialist in international economic relations.

Meade studied at the universities of Cambridge and Oxford in the late 1920’s. From 1940 to 1947 he was in government service, attached to the cabinet. He became a professor at the London School of Economics in 1947 and a professor at Cambridge University in 1957. In 1964–66, Meade was president of the Royal Economic Society and later its vice-president.

Meade represents the neoclassical trend in bourgeois political economy. He is concerned with the problems of tariff unions and economic unions, the balance of payments, and international currencies, regarding the last two as the central problems in the theory of the world capitalist economy.

WORKS

An Introduction to Economic Analysis and Policy, 2nd ed. London, 1937.
Planning and the Price Mechanism. London, 1948.
The Theory of International Economic Policy, vols. 1–2. London, 1954–55.
A Neoclassical Theory of Economic Growth. London, 1961.
Principles of Political Economy, vols. 1–2. London, 1965–68.