The Cambridge Economist Seduced by Australia

In May 1938 a young Cambridge economist entered the portals of the Queensland Treasury Building. He had three heavy tasks to occupy himself with: State Statistician, Financial Adviser to the Treasury and Director of the Bureau of Industry. It was a seven-year appointment. Colin Clark (above) was just thirty-three and considered “a bit of a genius” by J.M. Keynes, who had secured his appointment as a lecturer in statistics at Cambridge. As with Keynes, Clark’s degree was not in economics; he had studied chemistry at Oxford before picking up an interest in statistics that would be the making of him.

In June 1937 Clark arrived in Australia on sabbatical to do a term’s teaching at the University of Melbourne before planning to go on to America to undertake a lecture tour promoting his new book, National Income and Outlay, on national income accounting. At the time Clark was probably the world’s leading authority on national income accounting, having devised the concept of…