Mitchell, Wesley C

Mitchell, Wesley C(lair)

(born Aug. 5, 1874, Rushville, Ill., U.S.—died Oct. 29, 1948, New York, N.Y.) U.S. economist. Educated at the University of Chicago under Thorstein Veblen and John Dewey, he later taught at several universities, including Columbia (1913–19, 1922–44). He helped found the National Bureau of Economic Research in 1920 and was its director of research until 1945. His work greatly influenced the development of quantitative studies of economic behaviour in the U.S. and abroad, and he was the foremost expert of his day on business cycles.