Richard Stone
Richard Stone | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 30, 1913 London, England |
| Died | December 6, 1991 (aged 78) Cambridge, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Academic career | |
| Field | Economics |
| Institution | Cambridge University |
| School or tradition | Cambridge University |
| Alma mater | Cambridge University |
| Influences | James Meade |
| Contributions | National accounts, input-output |
| Awards | Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (1984) |
Sir John Richard Nicholas Stone (30 August 1913– 6 December 1991) was an eminent British economist who in 1984 received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for developing an accounting model that could be used to track economic activities on a national and, later, an international scale. While he was not the first economist to work in this field, he was the first to do so with double entry accounting. Double entry accounting basically states that every income item on one side of the balance sheet must be met by an expenditure item on the opposite side of the accounting sheet therefore creating a system of balance. This double entry system is the basis of nearly all modern accounting today. This allowed for a reliable way of tracking trade and wealth transfer on a global scale. He is sometimes known as the 'father of national income accounting', and is the author of studies of consumer demand statistics and demand modeling, economic growth, and input-output[1]. During his acceptance speech Stone mentioned François Quesnay as well as the Tableau économique. Stone stated that it was one of the very first works in economics to examine various sectors on such a global level and how they are all interconnected. Stone was educated at Westminster School, Cambridge University (Caius and King's).
Biography
After graduating from Cambridge in 1936 and until World War II he worked at Lloyd's Brokers[2]. During the war, Stone worked with James Meade as a statistician and economist for the British Government. It was at this time that they developed the early versions of the system of national accounts. After the war, Stone worked at Cambridge as the director of the new Department of Applied Economics (1945– 1955) and as P.D. Leake professor of finance and accounting (emeritus from 1980). Within the Department, he founded the Cambridge Growth Project, which developed the Cambridge Multisectoral Dynamic Model of the British economy (MDM). He was succeeded as leader of the Cambridge Growth Project by Terry Barker. A company founded by members of the Department and limited by guarantee, Cambridge Econometrics, was founded in 1978 with Stone as its first honorary president. The company continues to develop MDM and to use the model to make economic forecasts.
References
- ^ Counter-intuitively, the most cited of Richard Stone's works were his publications on consumer demand statistics and modeling. See Eugene Garfield: The 1984 Nobel Prizes in Economics and Literature are Awarded to Sir Richard Stone for Pioneering Systems of National Accounting and to Jaroslav Seifert, the National Poet of Czechoslovakia.
- ^ Janus: The Papers of John Richard Nicholas Stone