Fred Rogers Fairchild (1877 – 1966) was an American economist and educator.[1] Fairchild was born in Crete, Nebraska. His father was Arthur Babbitt Fairchild, a descendant of Thomas Fairchild who settled in New England in 1639. He was a brother of Henry Pratt Fairchild, a sociologist and educator. Fairchild attended Doane College (AB, 1898) in Crete and Yale University (PhD, 1904). He also received an honorary LL.D. from Doane in 1929.[2] Fairchild taught economics at Yale for many years.[3] He was a holder of the Knox Chair of Economics.[4] He was published widely, and his work included well received text books.[5][6]
Fairchild was an honorary member of the National Tax Association, an educational association of taxation experts.[7] His primary field of study was federal taxation in the United States. In a 1920 journal article published in the American Economic Review,[8] Fairchild proposed a restructuring of the post-war U.S. federal taxation system in light of calls for the repeal of the excess profits tax enacted during wartime. He recommended, in order to ensure a "reasonable revenue to the government and justice to the various classes of taxpayers",[9] that corporations be exempt from income taxes and instead that shareholder dividends become subject to the income tax.
In an article about the proper level for the capital gains tax,[10] Bruce Bartlett, a senior fellow at NCPA, cites Fairchild,
In a publication for the Foundation for Economic Education,[11] Hans F. Sennholz writes,