John Bates Clark
John Bates Clark is born on January 26th in 1847 (NNDB, 2016). The place he was born in was Providence, RI. He died on March 21st in 1938 in New York City. He also had a son, John Maurice Clark (interest: industrial economics and competition). John Bates Clark’s most famous theory was the about marginal productivity (Britannica, 2016).
What has he done?
John Bates Clark became interesting when he published the article: In The Distribution of Wealth (1899). In this article he developed the utility theory. Besides this important theory, he also developed the marginal productivity theory within this article. For this, he made a theoretical model: ‘static’ competitive equilibrium.
John Bates Clark Medal
John Bates Clark was one of the founders of the American Economic Association. He got his own medal, namely the John Bates Clark Medal. The John Bates Clark Medal is awarded once a year to an American economist that made a big contribution to the economic thought and knowledge (American Economic Association, 2016). The medal goes to someone each April. The medal can also be awarded to two people if there is a significant body of joint work. The winner of the medal in 2016 was Yuliy Sannikov.
Course relevancy
His work was extremely important to understand why people make decisions the way they make them (utility theory), but also because he gave new insight in the way how to look at one additional product/service.
The theories about utility and marginal productivity I always found interesting, but I was not aware of the man who was behind these bright theories. Now I am assigned to this alias I am glad to know who this man was and what he has achieved in his life. I found it also interesting that those theories are developed by the same person.
His work is highly relevant for this course. The theories are relevant for the way how consumers choose (utility theory) and relevant for how a producer can look at productivity (marginal productivity). Since this course is about organizations, those two components, consumers and producers, are both applicable for the way an organization operates.
