Sir Richard Stone

Sir Richard Stonewas a British economist who in 1984 received the Nobel Prize for Economics for developing an accounting model that could be used to track economic activities on a national and, later, an international scale. He is sometimes known as the father of national income accounting.

Stone initially studied law at the University of Cambridge, but, under the influence of economist John Maynard Keynes, he took a degree in economics in 1935 (Sc.D., 1957). He worked for a brokerage firm in London (1936–40), and in 1940, at the invitation of Keynes, he entered the British government’s Central Statistical Office. After World War II he was appointed director of the new department of applied economics at Cambridge. He retained that position until 1955, when he became P.D. Leake professor of finance and accounting at Cambridge (1955–80; professor emeritus from 1980). He was knighted in 1978.

The first official estimates of British national income and expenditures were made according to Stone’s method in 1941. The greater part of Stone’s work, however, was done in the 1950s, when he offered the first concrete statistical means by which to measure investment, government spending, and consumption; these models resulted in what was, in essence, a national bookkeeping system. He went on to adapt his models for such international organizations as the United Nations. He was coauthor (with J.E. Meade) of National Income and Expenditure (1944; 10th ed., with Giovanna Stone, 1977) and author of several other works, including Input–Output and National Accounts (1961), Mathematics in the Social Sciences and Other Essays (1966), and Mathematical Models of the Economy and Other Essays (1970). He was also general editor and part author of the series A Programme for Growth 1962–74.