Richard Stone (Ökonom)

Sir John Richard Nicholas Stone (born 30 August 1913 in London; † 6 December 1991 in Cambridge) was a British economist.

Richard Stone was made a Knight Bachelor in 1978 and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1984 for his pioneering work in developing national accounting systems, radically improving the basis of empirical economic analysis.

Education and career

Stone attended Westminster School, spent a year in India (his father was a judge in Madras) and Indonesia, and studied law at Cambridge University (Gonville and Caius College) from 1931, but switched to economics after two years. Here he was particularly influenced by Colin Clark, who encouraged him to study national accounts. He graduated in 1936 and worked for Lloyd’s in London.

During the Second World War he worked for the government, where in 1941 under James Meade he was involved in producing the first national accounts for Britain. He then worked in the Central Statistical Office as an assistant to John Maynard Keynes. From 1945 he was back at Cambridge, where he was Director of the Department of Applied Economics (DAE) until 1955. From 1955 until his retirement in 1980 he was P. D. Leake Professor of Finance and Accounting at Cambridge.

Stone was inducted into the British Academy in 1956 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1968. From 1978 to 1980 he was President of the Royal Economic Society.

Family

Richard Stone was born in London in 1913, the only child of Gilbert and Elsie Stone. His father was a solicitor.^[1]

He was married three times, most recently to the Italian Giovanna Saffi from 1960.^[1] He also wrote two books with her.

Research

With Alan Brown he started the Cambridge Growth Project, which developed the Cambridge Multisectoral Dynamic Model (MDM) for the UK economy. He became honorary president of Cambridge Econometrics in 1978 when the company was founded, which further developed the MDM for economic forecasting.

Prizes and honours

The Richard Stone Prize of the Journal of Applied Econometrics is named after Richard Stone, as is the Sir Richard Stone Prize of the International Input-Output Association.

Writings (selection)

• Giovanna Saffi Stone, Social Accounting and Economic Models, 1959
• Giovanna Saffi Stone, National Income and Expenditure, 1961

Literature

• Angus Deaton: John Richard Nicholas Stone, 1913-1991. in Proceedings of the British Academy. Vol. 82, 1993, pp. 475-492 (thebritishacademy.ac.uk [PDF]).

See also

List of Nobel Laureates in Economics

Web links

• Information from the Nobel Foundation on the 1984 award to Richard Stone (English)

Individual references

1. ↑ ^{a b} Richard Stone – Biographical.nobelprize.org, 1984, retrieved 29 December 2015 (English).