author
John Bates Clark
1847–1938
A leading American economist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he helped shape how generations of students and scholars think about wages, capital, and competition. His name lives on through the John Bates Clark Medal, one of the best-known honors in economics.
2 Audiobooks
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 an international reputation. He studied at Amherst College and spent much of his career teaching at Columbia University, where he helped establish economics as a major academic field in the United States.
Clark is best known for developing the marginal productivity theory of distribution, an influential attempt to explain how income is divided among labor and capital in a competitive economy. He was also associated with the marginalist turn in economics, which shifted attention toward individual choices, value, and market equilibrium.
Later generations remembered him not only for his writing but also for his long influence on the profession. The American Economic Association's John Bates Clark Medal was named in his honor, linking his legacy to many of the field's most celebrated younger economists.