Robert Hall, Baron Roberthall
Robert Lowe Hall, Baron Roberthall
Life
Robert Hall was born in
During the Second World War he worked in the Ministry of Supply in Washington, D.C., and on the Board of Trade. In 1947, he succeeded James Meade as the Director of the Economic Section of the Cabinet Office of the British government; from 1953 until 1961 he was chief economic advisor to successive Chancellors of the Exchequer.
Hall was appointed a
Hall retired shortly after Selwyn Lloyd's first budget in 1961. He was politically on the Left but thought Conservative governments managed the economy better. He favoured Keynesian deficit finance, but had grown increasingly worried about inflation. He had opposed ROBOT (the plan to float the pound in the early 1950s), but with the disappearance of the dollar shortage came to favour floating after all, although he never argued for it very strongly. He wanted an incomes policy, and came to feel that unemployment was too low and that British workers and managers were not efficient enough.[7]
He was principal of Hertford College, Oxford, from 1964 to 1967.[1]
In 1932 he married Laura Margaret, daughter of G.E. Linfoot, an Oxford graduate and later a fellow of Somerville College, Oxford;[8] there were two daughters, Felicity and Anthea, to the marriage, which was dissolved in 1968. In the same year Hall married Perilla Thyme Nowell-Smith, a divorcee and daughter of Sir Richard Southwell, FRS, who survived him.[9]
Publications
- Planning, The Rede Lecture 1962, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 32 pp.
Quotes
'If intuition were given the "scientific" name of "non-statistical inference", no-one would look down his nose at it.' (Quoted in John Brunner, 'The New Idolatry', Rebirth of Britain : a symposium of essays by eighteen writers, London : Pan, 1964, pg.38.)
Notes
- ^ a b c Who's Who 1974, London : A.&C. Black, 1974, pg. 2781
- ^ "No. 38797". The London Gazette (Supplement). 2 January 1950. p. 3.
- ^ "No. 4005". The London Gazette (Supplement). 1 January 1954. p. 4.
- ^ "No. 44863". The London Gazette (Supplement). 6 June 1969. p. 5961.
- ^ "No. 44953". The London Gazette. 9 October 1969. p. 10317.
- ^ "No. 44967". The London Gazette. 18 November 1969. p. 11056.
- ^ Dell 1997, p263-4
- ^ Munro, Craig. Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University – via Australian Dictionary of Biography.
- ^ "Who's Who 1974". London: A.&C. Black. 1974. p. 2781.
References
- Dell, Edmund (1997). The Chancellors: A History of the Chancellors of the Exchequer, 1945-90. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-006-38418-2.
- Hall, Robert Lowe; ISBN 0-04-445273-X
- Hall, Robert Lowe; ISBN 0-04-445274-8
- Arndt, H.M.; Bensusan Butt, D.M.; Swan, T.W. (1988), "An Appreciation of Robert Hall, 1901-1988", The Economic Record, 64 (4): 360–361,
- Jones, Kit (1994), An Economist Among Mandarins: A Biography of Robert Hall, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-47155-9
- ROBERTHALL, Baron, Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2008; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2007