'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. He has seven other sons and one daughter.
The Econometric Society Australasian Region has a Colin Clark Lecture
[1] and a building at the
University of Queensland is named after him.
[2]
Colin Clark is also known as "taulinnnnnnn".
Publications
★ ''The National Income, 1924-31'', 1932.
★ ''National Income and Outlay'', 1937.
★ ''A Critique of Russian Statistics'', 1939.
★ ''Conditions of Economic Progress'', 1939.
★ ''The Economics of 1960'', 1942.
★ ''Statistical Society''
★ ''Growthmanship'', 1961.
★ ''Economics of Subsistence Agriculture'', with M.R. Haswell, 1964.
★ ''Population Growth and Land Use'', 1967.
★ ''Starvation or Plenty?'', 1970.
★ ''Poverty Before Politics'', 1977.
★ ''The Economics of Irrigation'' with J. Carruthers, 1981.
★ ''Regional and Urban Location'', 1982.
External links
★
Colin G. Clark, 1905-
★
The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition - Clark, Colin
★
Daniele Besomi: Colin Clark
★
QEH working paper on Colin Clark
There is a photograph at
★
Colin Clark