Introduction

Abstract

Lionel Robbins and James Meade both served as economists in Whitehall during the Second World War. They joined the Central Economic Information Service in the summer of 1940. Robbins, Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics since 1929, had been in Cambridge, where the School had been evacuated on the outbreak of war. Meade had just made his way with his wife and three children across falling France from Geneva, where he had been working for the Economic Intelligence Service of the League of Nations since 1937. Previously, Meade had been Fellow and Lecturer in Economics at Hertford College, Oxford. Robbins also had an Oxford connection: he had been Lecturer (1924–5) and Fellow and Lecturer (1927–9) in Economics at New College. Meade had attended his lectures. A few months after Robbins and Meade joined the Central Economic Information Service, it was split into the Central Statistical Office and the Economic Section, of which Robbins became Director in September 1941. Meade succeeded him as Director at the end of the war, officially taking over on 1 January 1946 when Robbins returned to LSE. Meade followed Robbins to the School, as Professor of Commerce with special reference to international trade, when he resigned from government service in 1947. Meade later became Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge (1957–67).