James Meade

Who was James Meade?

James Edward Meade CB, FBA was a British economist and winner of the 1977 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences jointly with the Swedish economist Bertil Ohlin for their "pathbreaking contribution to the theory of international trade and international capital movements."

Meade was born in Swanage, Dorset. He was educated at Malvern College and attended Oriel College, Oxford in 1926 to read Greats, but switched to Philosophy, Politics and Economics and gained an outstanding first. His interest in economics grew from an influential postgraduate year at Christ's College, Cambridge and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he held frequent discussions with leading economists of the time including Dennis Robertson and John Maynard Keynes.

After working in the League of Nations and the Cabinet Office, he was the leading economist of the early years of Attlee's government, before taking professorships at LSE and Cambridge.