John Bell Condliffe | |
Birth Date: | 23 December 1891 |
Birth Place: | Footscray, Victoria, Australia |
Death Place: | Walnut Creek, California, United States |
Nationality: | New Zealand |
Institution: | Canterbury University College, Institute of Pacific Relations, London School of Economics and University of California, Berkeley |
John Bell Condliffe (Footscray, Victoria, 23 December 1891 - Walnut Creek, California, 23 December 1981) was a New Zealand economist, university professor and economic consultant. Lauded for the decisive role he played in international NGOs in the interwar period, he was one of New Zealand's best-known international economists.
A professor of economics at the Canterbury University College, Condliffe resigned in 1926 to become the first research secretary of the Institute of Pacific Relations, a nascent international organization concerned with the Pacific basin.[1] He took a 2/3 part-time position at the University of Michigan during the academic year 1930–1931, then left the IPR altogether to enter the Economic and Financial Organization of the League of Nations, where he wrote the six first World Economic Surveys (1932–1937).
Having left the League to become professor of commerce at the London School of Economics in 1938–1939, Condliffe was distinguished in 1939 by the prestigious Howland Memorial Prize and accepted a professorship in economics at the University of California, Berkeley, which he held until retirement in 1953. In the meantime, he returned to the IPR as the chairman of its International Research Committee between 1940 and 1945.[2]