Colin Clark

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Colin Grant Clark (November 2, 1905 - September 4, 1989) was a British economist and statistician who worked in both the United Kingdom and Australia, and who pioneered the use of the gross national product ("GNP") as the basis for studying national economies.

Colin Clark was born in London. He was educated at the Dragon School in Oxford, then at Winchester College, and from 1924 at Brasenose College, Oxford where he studied chemistry. Through G. D. H. Cole and Lionel Robbins he became interested in Economics and after graduation he held research positions at the London School of Economics, the University of Liverpool and the government's Economic Advisory Council. Keynes was a member of the Council and he was very impressed by Clark: "Clark is, I think, a bit of a genius." From 1931 to 1937 Clark was a Lecturer in Statistics at Cambridge University. Between 1938 and 1953 he was Director of the Queensland Bureau of Industry and the Queensland Government Statistician.

Clark's Sector Model (1950)

He returned to England and served as Director of the Institute of Agricultural Economics at Oxford University until 1969. Clark subsequently spent time in Australia and England and returned to Australia permanently in 1978.

He is the father of Gregory Clark (1936-) former Australian diplomat and now a professor of economics based in Japan.

The Econometric Society Australasian Region has a Colin Clark Lecture [1] and a building at the University of Queensland is named after him. [2]