Claude William Guillebaud CBE (2 July 1890 – 23 August 1971) was an influential British economist, at the Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge, and civil servant.
Family Claude Guillebaud (which ought to be pronounced to rhyme with "keel-bow")Palmer, Stephen. "Guillebaud, Claude William, 1890–1971". Dictionary of Falklands Biography. Retrieved 6 February 2025. was born on 2 July 1890 at The Rectory, Yatesbury, Wiltshire, to The Rev. Ernest Delabere Guillebaud (1856–1907) and Mabel Louisa Marshall (1850–1912), who was the younger sister of Alfred Marshall. 'Obituaries: Claude Guillebaud'. 'The Eagle', vol. LXV, no. 277 (January 1972), pp. 10-1. St John's College, Cambridge. Retrieved 6 February 2025. Mabel had been prevented from marrying a subaltern in the army by her "tyrant" father. Claude related in a letter to John Maynard Keynes that, after she chose to marry Ernest Guillebaud, then a young Anglican priest, "the old gentleman [Mabel's father] hated him and made things as difficult as possible for him, solely because he had married my mother."Coase, Ronald (1995). Essays on Economics and Economists. Chicago: Chicago University Press, p. 123.
Guillebaud married the Austrian Marie-Thérèse (Pauline) Prunner in 1918: and they had two daughters. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1948 New Year Honours lists. He died in Cambridge from a prolonged illness on 23 August 1971.
Education Like his twin brother, the forester Walter, Claude was educated at Repton School, the Victoria University of Manchester, and St John's College, Cambridge, where, unlike Walter, he studied economics, in which he won first-class honours in both parts of the tripos and received the Adam Smith Prize for best undergraduate essay.
Academic Career Academic positions In 1915 he was made a fellow of St John's, and, after his return from the civil service at the end of World War I, he became one of its supervisors in economics. He was appointed a director of studies there from 1935, taught economics there until his retirement in 1956, and served as a senior tutor there from 1952, succeeding Sir James Wordie. He also taught French, in which he was the tutor of the choral musician Peter Stanley Lyons between 1948 and 1950.
At university level, he was appointed a lecturer in economics in 1926, Girdlers Lecturer in 1945, and reader in economics in 1956. David A. Collard, writing about the Faculty as it was in the 1920s, considers Guillebaud to have been one of the "serious economists" at the university, alongside J. M. Keynes, A. C. Pigou, G. F. Shove and Frederick Lavington.Collard, David A. 'Cambridge After Marshall', in Whitaker, John (ed.) (1990). Centenary Essays on Alfred Marshall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 169.
Academic works Guillebaud did not have any national profile until the 1930s. His first book, on German works-councils, reoriented his studies towards post-imperial Germany, but was not publicly influential. However, his next book, The Economic Recovery of Germany (1939), contentiously argued that Hitler's Third Reich recovered more effectively from the Great Depression than its rivals, and earned him a reputation for intellectual honesty and for willingness to state uncomfortable truths. Z. A. S., R. C. O. M., 'Claude Guillebaud as an Economist'. 'The Eagle', vol. LXV, no. 277 (January 1972), pp. 12-3. St John's College, Cambridge. Retrieved 6 February 2025.
During the Second World War, Guillebaud published a volume on the social policy of Nazi Germany, after which he edited the Cambridge Economic Handbooks after the death of J. M. Keynes. In 1961, he published a highly influential variorum edition of his uncle Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics, which had been encouraged by Keynes and took Guillebaud 27 years to complete to its final edition.
Public service From 1946, Guillebaud had important public offices as an arbitrator in industrial wage disputes, and as chairman of Courts of Inquiry and of special committees, and as a member of Wages Boards. He was chair of both the Enquiry into the Cost of the National Health Service (known as the Guillebaud Report) (1953–56) and the Committee of Inquiry on Railway Pay (1958–60). In the latter office, he concluded that the railwaymen had "genuine grounds for complaint" about their wages, of which he supported a rise of 5% and the possibility for another later increase."Mr. Guillebaud Held the Key". The Times. 13 February 1960, p. 6. The Times, in a summary of these offices, described Guillebaud as a man of "humility, patience and good humour", with the ability to "withdraw and consider the problem from a scholarly distance.""Inquirer into Other People's Pay". The Times. 10 February 1960, p. 10.
Guillebaud's last public office, in 1967, was to author an economic survey on the economy of the Falkland Islands, which led him to move to Stanley, Falkland Islands, for a month at the request of its Governor Cosmo Haskard. He made many recommendations, including an expansion of the numbers of cattle kept on sheep farms, an increase in the taxation of profits, and improvements in education at both primary and secondary level. He finished his report with a warning for the future:
Selected publications The Works Council: A German Experiment in Industrial Democracy (1928) (contributor) Cambridge History of the British Empire, 2nd vol. (1929) The Economic Recovery of Germany, 1933–1938 (1939) The Social Policy of Nazi Germany (1941) The Wages Council System in Great Britain (1958) Economic Survey of the Sisal Industry of Tanganyika (1959) Art and Economics in Cambridge (1960) (editor) Principles of Economics by Alfred Marshall (1961) Wage Determination and Wages Policy, 2nd ed. (1967) The Role of the Arbitrator in Industrial Wage Disputes (1970)
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