Alexander Kirkland Cairncross

Background

Cairncross, Alexander Kirkland was born on February 11, 1911 in Lesmahagow, Scotland. Son of Alexander Kirkland and Elizabeth Andrew (Wishart) Cairncross.

Education

Graduate, Hamilton Academy, 1928. Master of Arts, University Glasgow, 1933. Doctor of Philosophy, Cambridge University, 1936.

Doctor of Laws, Mount Allison University, 1962. Doctor of Laws, Glasgow University, 1966. Doctor of Laws, Exeter University, 1969.

Doctor of Letters, Reading University, 1968. Doctor of Letters, Heriot Watt University, 1969. Doctor of Science, University College, Swansea, 1971.

Doctor of Science, Queen's University, Belfast, 1972. DUniv., Stirling University, 1973.

Career

Lector, Political Economics, University Glasgow, 1935-1939. Lector, Agriculture Economics, West of Scotland Agric College, Glasgow, 1935-1939. Economics Assistant, United Kingdom War Cabinet Office, 1940-1941.

Administration Officer, United Kingdom Board of Trade, 1941.

Assistant Director, Deputy Director, Director, United Kingdom Ministry Aircraft Production, 1941-1945. Economics Advisory Panel, Berlin, 1945-1946.

Staff, The Economist, 1946. Economics Advisor, United Kingdom Board of Trade, 1946-1949.

Director, Economics Division, Organisation of European Economic Company-operation, 1950.

Professor Applied Economics, University Glasgow, 1951-1961. Director, Economics Development Institute, Institution, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Washington, 1955-1956. Economics Adviser, United Kingdom Government, 1961-1964.

Head, United Kingdom Government Economics Service, 1964-1969.

Master, Street Peter’s College Oxford, 1969-1978. Visiting Professor, Brookings Institute, Institution, Washington, 1972.

Leverhulme Visiting Professor, Bangalore, Delhi, Bombay, 1980-1981. Retired, Fellow, Street Anthony’s College Oxford, since 1978.

Editor, Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 1954-1961, Social and Economics Studies (University Glasgow), 1953-1961.

Achievements

• Alexander Kirkland Cairncross has been listed as a noteworthy economist by Marquis Who's Who.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Home and Foreign Investment, 1870-1913: Studies in Capital Accumulation

    (Originally published in 1953, this book presents a series...)

  • The British Economy Since 1945: Economic Policy and Performance 1945 - 1995

    (In this fully revised and updated second edition, Sir Ale...)

  • Factors in Economic Development

    ( First published in 1961, this work is a compendium of e...)

  • Years of Recovery: British Economic Policy, 1945-51

    ( Years of Recovery was the first comprehensive study of ...)

  • Sterling in Decline: The Devaluations of 1931, 1949 and 1967

    (Sterling in Decline takes the devaluations of 1931, 1949 ...)

  • Inflation, Growth and International Finance
  • Home and Foreign Investment, 1870-1913: Studies in Capital Accumulation
  • Factors in Economic Development
  • Factors in Economic Development
  • Home and Foreign Investment, 1870???1913 by A. K. Cairncross (2015-12-03)
  • Control of Long Term International Capital Movements
  • Home and Foreign Investment, 1870-1913: Studies in Capital Accumulation
  • Monetary Policy in a Mixed Economy, Wicksell Lectures 1960
  • Managed Economy

Views

My prewar interests from 1931 onwards were mainly in international economics. Beginning with an undergraduate thesis on the transfer problem, followed by a doctoral dissertation on the interaction of home and foreign investment along Keynesian lines and leading on to studies of labour integration, capital movements and building cycles that were interrupted by the war. All of these studies (parts of which were eventually published in 1953) mix theory with an examination of the historical record, paying due regard to the uncertainties of the statistical data.

In an effort to make economic theory and its practical implications more intelligible to the layman (and to myself), I wrote an elementary textbook which was virtually completed at the outbreak of war in 1939. Wartime experience sharpened my interest in problems of economic management and policy and in the genesis and impact of technical change. lieutenant seemed to me then that current treatment of economic growth (itself a neglected subject) overlooked the importance of managerial factors, gave far too much prominence to capital accumulation and tended to treat technical change, mistakenly, as exogenous. Since 1939, I have spent only nine years as a university teacher.

In the middle of administrative and advisory duties, my contributions to economics have been limited to essays and addresses, reports, prefaces, reviews and editorial comment. In the 1950s I took an interest in regional and industrial problems, then in economic development, and finally in monetary theory. In the 1960s and 1970s I wrote on a wide variety of subjects in applied economics, mainly from the angle of planning and economic management and revisited briefly, after forty years, the subject of international capital movements.

After my retirement in 1978,1 returned to the economic history of the recent past, with occasional forays into analysis of current policy.

Membership

President Girls Public Day School Trust, 1972-1991. Fellow British Academy, Royal Society Edinburgh (honorary). Member Royal Economic Society (vice president), Scottish Economic Society (vice president), American Academy Arts and Sciences (foreign honorary), British Association for the Advancement of Science (president 1971).

Interests

• 012 Teaching of Economics. 113 Economic Planning. 134 Inflation and Deflation.

Connections

Married Mary Frances Glynn, May 29, 1943 (deceased June 1998). Children: Frances Anne, Philip Wishart, Alexander Messent, David John, Elizabeth Mary.

Father:

Alexander Kirkland Cairncross

Mother:

Elizabeth Andrew (Wishart) Cairncross

Spouse:

Mary Frances Glynn

child:

David John Cairncross

child:

Elizabeth Mary Cairncross

child:

Frances Anne Cairncross

child:

Philip Wishart Cairncross

child:

Alexander Messent Cairncross