James Meade

Susan Howson is a Professor of Economics and Fellow of Trinity College, University of Toronto; she has also held visiting positions in the International Division of the Bank of England, Nuffield College Oxford and Wolfson College Cambridge. She has published several books on British economic policy in the 20th century, Domestic Monetary Management in Britain 1919–38 (Cambridge University Press 1975), The Economic Advisory Council 1930–1939 (with Donald Winch) (Cambridge University Press 1977) and British Monetary Policy 1945–51 (1992), and edited The Collected Papers of James Meade (3 vols, 1988) and, with Donald Moggridge, The Wartime Diaries of Lionel Robbins and James Meade and the Cabinet Office Diary of James Meade (1990). She wrote the definitive biography of Lionel Robbins (Cambridge University Press 2011) at the request of his family and edited his major articles and lectures (1997 and 2018). Besides two prizes for her early work and two senior research fellowships she was made a Distinguished Fellow of the History of Economics Society in 2019.

• Introduction; 1. Boyhood; 2. Oriel College Oxford; 3. Hertford College Oxford; 4. A married don; 5. Geneva; 6. Wartime Whitehall, 1940–1; 7. Postwar reconstruction, 1941–2; 8. 943; 9. The last months of the war; 10. The postwar Labour government; 11. London and Geneva: the ITO and GATT; 12. The London School of Economics; 13. Trade and welfare; 14. Cambridge; 15. Mauritius: The Meade Mission; 16. The sixties; 17. The sixties continued; 18. Senior research fellow 1969–74; 19. The Meade Report; 20. The Stagflation Project; 21. Stagflation and the share economy; 22. Agathotopia or a good place.

'James Meade is one of the most important but underrated economists of the mid twentieth century. Susan Howson provides a wonderful introduction to his contributions and scholarly life.' Douglas Irwin, Dartmouth College