Background
PEACOCK, Alan Turner was born in 1922 in Ryton-on-Tyne, England.
PEACOCK, Alan Turner was born in 1922 in Ryton-on-Tyne, England.
Master of Arts University St Andrews 1947. Honorary Dr University Stirling, 1974. Dr (H.C.), Zurich, 1984.
Lector, University St Andrews,
8. Lector, Reader Public Fin, London School of Economies and Political Science, London, United Kingdom,
51, 1951-1955. Professor of Economics, University Edinburgh, 1957-1962.
Professor of Economics, University York, England, 1962-1967. Visiting Professor of Economics, University Münster, W. Germany, since 1951, Johns Hopkins University, 1958. Visiting Research Professor, Einaudi Foundation, Turin, 1970.
Chief. Economics Adviser, United Kingdom Department Trade Industry, 1973-1976. Honorary Professor of Economics, University York, 1978-1981. Professor of Economics, Vice-Chancellor, University Buckingham, Buckingham, England, 1978, 1983-1984.
Honorary Professor of Economics, Heriot-Watt University since 1978. Association Editor, Ec,
56. Co-editor, Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 1960-1962.
(HUTCHINSON UNIVERSITY LIBRARY National Income and Social ...)
My early approach to economics was entirely derived from a burning interest in policy questions, having been tempted to take an active interest in politics. My first somewhat polemical work was in the then entirely unexplored area of the economics of social security and was an
exercise in Keynesian fiscal economics. It was a natural transition to public finance and to the study of the causes and consequences of publicsector growth, and I suppose that my joint work with Jack Wiseman is something of a pioneering effort.
Everpresent liberal (in the British sense) views led me to reject Paretian welfare economics as the normative base of public finance, leading to my co-operation with like-minded Charles Rowley (1970s).
As Chief Economic Adviser to the United Kingdom Department of Trade and Industry, I was brought face to face with the grubby realities of policy formulation and implementation (1973-1976). Rather than lead me to be sceptical of the applications of economic analysis to policy problems, this experience strengthened my conviction that governments need more economics and not less, if only to understand the strict limitations on the effectiveness of State intervention. My recent writing has therefore been concentrated on the economic analysis of government (1977T) and particularly on the ‘feedback’ effects of government policy on the use by industry and taxpayers/ voters of the instruments of political participation, using that term in a wider sense than that employed by public choice theorists.
These latter-day preoccupations plus a long-standing interest in the economics of the arts should be enough to allow me to hold a reasonably intelligent conversation with much better trained and more specialised younger economists — at least for a little while longer!.
Royal Commission, on Constitution 73, Social Science Research Council 1971-1972. Board of directors English Music Theatre Ltd. 1975-1977; Council of Manager, National Institute of Economical Social Research 1977-1986.
Married Margaret Martha Astell-Burt in 1944.