author
John Bates Clark
1847–1938
Best known for shaping early neoclassical economics, this influential American thinker argued that income in a competitive economy reflects each factor’s contribution to production. His ideas left a lasting mark on economic theory—and on one of the profession’s most famous prizes.
2 Audiobooks
Essentials of Economic Theory As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy
by John Bates Clark
Social Justice Without Socialism
by John Bates Clark
About the author
Born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1847, John Bates Clark became one of the first American economists to gain major international recognition. He studied at Brown and Amherst and later continued his education in Zurich and Heidelberg before beginning a long academic career that included posts at Carleton College, Smith College, Amherst, and Columbia University.
Clark is especially remembered for developing the marginal productivity theory of distribution, an important part of neoclassical economics. He was a leading figure in the marginalist movement in the United States, and his writing helped shape debates about wages, capital, competition, and the way income is divided among labor and other factors of production.
He spent much of his later career at Columbia University and remained an influential public intellectual into the early 20th century. His reputation endured after his death in 1938 through the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded by the American Economic Association to an outstanding economist under forty.