Jack Downie
Encyclopedia
Jack Downie was a British economist who is famous for writing The Competitive Process.

Nightingale discusses the "short but brilliant career" of economist Jack Downie, emphasising the importance of his theory of The Competitive Process for many who rejecting orthodox theory when modeling of industry behavior.

He was born in September 1919 in Lancashire
Lancashire
Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...

, UK, and attended New College
New College, Oxford
New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.- Overview :The College's official name, College of St Mary, is the same as that of the older Oriel College; hence, it has been referred to as the "New College of St Mary", and is now almost always...

 at Oxford in 1938. He was in the Royal Artillery
Royal Artillery
The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery , is the artillery arm of the British Army. Despite its name, it comprises a number of regiments.-History:...

 during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, returning to New College in 1946. He took his finals in 1947, graduating with first-class honors in PPE. In 1947 he joined the civil service, working first in the economic section of the cabinet office, and then at HM Treasury
HM Treasury
HM Treasury, in full Her Majesty's Treasury, informally The Treasury, is the United Kingdom government department responsible for developing and executing the British government's public finance policy and economic policy...

. His colleagues included Robert Hall, Marcus Fleming, Nitta Watts, David Bensusan-Butt, Christopher Dow
Christopher Dow
Christopher Dow was a British applied economist whose career ran from 1945 until his death in 1998.During his career he worked in some of the major British economic institutions, serving as Senior Economic Adviser to the UK Treasury, Deputy Director of the National Institute of Economic and Social...

, Kit Jones, Fred Atkinson, Robert Neild, Peggy Hemming, and Bryan Hopkin and his close friends included Nicholas Kaldor
Nicholas Kaldor
Nicholas Kaldor, Baron Kaldor was one of the foremost Cambridge economists in the post-war period...

 and Tommy Balogh.

Downie over the period 1952-54 was on secondment from his civil service job, in Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...

 at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe
United Nations Economic Commission for Europe
The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe was established in 1947 to encourage economic cooperation among its member states. It is one of five regional commissions under the administrative direction of United Nations headquarters. It has 56 member states, and reports to the UN Economic and...

. Following his return to the UK he took up a research grant at the Oxford Institute of Statistics, where he wrote work that made his name: The Competitive Process (1958).

Downie returned to the treasury during 1956, where one of his achievements was to provide the theoretical basis of the treasury evidence to the Radcliffe Committee. As well, his involvement in macroeconomic policy advising took him, with Hall, into the long and disturbed development of proposals for prices and incomes policies. These were perhaps the first peacetime attempts to make policy specifically to loosen the inflationary and external imbalance constraints on economic growth created by relatively long periods of full employment.

In 1961, Downie became the Assistant Secretary General in charge of Economics and Statistics at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is an international economic organisation of 34 countries founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade...

(OECD) in Paris. He was at the OECD for just two years when he died.
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