Professor Arthur Brown

Applied economist who used his slide-rule to devastating effect

Arthur Joseph Brown, economist: born Alderley Edge, Cheshire 8 August 1914; Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford 1937-46; Lecturer in Economics, Hertford College, Oxford 1937-40; staff, Foreign Research and Press Service 1940-43, Foreign Office Research Department 1943-45, Economic Section, Offices of the Cabinet 1945-47; Professor of Economics, Leeds University 1947-79 (Emeritus), Head of Department of Economics and Commerce 1947-65, Pro-Vice-Chancellor 1975-77; FBA 1972; CBE 1974; President, Royal Economic Society 1976-78, Vice-President 1978-2003; Chairman, Advisory Panel on Student Maintenance Grants 1967-68; married 1938 Joan Taylor (two sons, and one son deceased); died Leeds 28 February 2003.

Arthur Brown was an applied economist. He understood this to mean not, as today, the testing and estimation of economic models using sophisticated econometric techniques, but rather the application of economics as a tool to assist in the design and appraisal of policy. The policy did not need to be, and frequently wasn't, economic policy in the limited sense of the design of taxes and other instruments to achieve economic objectives.

Following his time at Oxford in the 1930s – where he held an All Souls Fellowship throughout the Second World War and its aftermath – he worked in the Government from 1940 to 1947; in the Foreign Research and Press Service, then in the Foreign Office Research Department and finally (1945-47) in the Economic Section of the Offices of the Cabinet. Much of his work concerned the economics of war and defence: exploring the economic consequences of armament and, for Germany after the war, re-armament, and assessing the economic strengths and weaknesses of the belligerents.

The range of this work is revealed by some 56 notes and brief articles, most signed simply AJB, published mainly in the Bulletin of International News. Some titles give the flavour: "Economic Factors Connected to the Fall of France"; "World Sources of Petroleum"; "Finance and Man Power in the War'; "Japan's Strengths and Weaknesses"; "The Prospects of International Migration"; "Coal and Cotton".

The elements of applied economics, as he practised it, were the judicious choice of the right form of economic analysis, its development to fit the problem, and the processing of available statistical sources to give a feel for what was important and an idea of relevant magnitudes.

At meetings, having explained the economic theory, Brown would produce a small slide-rule that he carried in his top pocket and carry out rapid calculations to give some quantitative basis for argument. In his hands this simple tool kit could be devastatingly effective. In the 1960s as a young economist I watched him calculate the regional multiplier, the short-hand device for calculating the impact on regional income of government expenditure in a region. On the back of a (largish) brown envelope he derived the formula, then, using his famous slide-rule and a copy of the National Income "Blue Book", he estimated its value. A second envelope was used to derive a more sophisticated version with feedbacks.

His multipliers came into standard use for assessing regional policy and remained so for well over a decade. They are even used occasionally by local government today. A subsequent six-month computer-based study served only to confirm that the Brown multipliers were correct to the second decimal place. The original had taken Brown about an hour. In similar vein, but using a few more statistical sources, he compiled the first set of regional income accounts. Their general outline was not significantly modified by detailed subsequent work.

These applied skills inevitably made Brown a popular economist with successive governments, and his public service was extensive. He was involved in the decolonisation of British Africa as a member of government advisory committees. In the 1960s he was a UK nominee to the UN Consultative Group on the Economic and Social Consequences of Disarmament. When the 1966 Wilson Government launched an active regional policy, Arthur Brown was the obvious choice to provide the missing analytical framework for the policy.

Not only was this an area that could have been designed for his form of economics but he was "a Yorkshireman who likes living in Yorkshire" and it was recognised that "it would be a tremendous advantage to have this exercise led by someone living in a 'region' and not in London". He spent six years with the National Institute of Economic and Social Research working on regional policy and writing the definitive book on the subject, The Framework of Regional Economies in the United Kingdom (1972). After his retirement he returned to the National Institute to work on inflation.

When he was appointed Professor of Economics at Leeds University in 1947 Brown was the youngest economist ever to be appointed to a chair, a record that was not broken until the late 1960s when the new universities were looking for mathematical economists. Brown remained at Leeds until his retirement in 1979 by which time he had achieved numerous accolades including four honorary doctorates, a stint as President of the Royal Economic Society, Fellowship of the British Academy and appointment as CBE. He also served nine years as a member of the University Grants Committee.

He made significant contributions to international trade theory, monetary economics, regional economics and the theory of inflation and was the author of eight books and numerous articles. The Great Inflation, 1939-1951 (1955) was a very influential work. It has been claimed that in it he discovered the Phillips curve almost a decade before Phillips. The difference was that Arthur Brown saw the theoretical reasons for a relationship between unemployment and inflation but did not believe that empirically it was stable. In this he was correct.

Although born in Cheshire, Brown went to school and lived most of his life in Yorkshire. He was a gently spoken and courteous man, unfailingly kind to younger lecturers but, when necessary, firm with more senior colleagues. He and his wife, Joan, had a love of the Lake District, where they holidayed for many years.

John Bowers