Walker, Francis Amasa

Walker, Francis Amasa, 1840–97, American economist, statistician, and educator, b. Boston, grad. Amherst; son of Amasa Walker. In the Civil War he was brevetted brigadier general. Walker's activities in the U.S. government included service as director of the 10th Census (1880) and as U.S. commissioner of Indian Affairs (1871–72). From 1872 to 1880 he was professor of political economy at Yale, and from 1881 to his death he was president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As an economist, Walker is especially known for his theories on wages and profits (promulgated in The Wages Question, 1876) and for his advocacy of international bimetallism. Other works by him include Money (1878), Political Economy (1883), Land and Its Rent (1883), and International Bimetallism (1896).

Bibliography

See biography by J. P. Munroe (1923); study by B. Newton (1968).