Tony Thirlwall

Anthony Philip Thirlwall (21 April 1941 – 8 November 2023) was a British economist who was Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Kent. He made major contributions to regional economics; the analysis of unemployment and inflation; balance of payments theory, and to growth and development economics with particular reference to developing countries. He was the author of the bestselling textbook Economics of Development: Theory and Evidence (Palgrave Macmillan) now in its ninth edition. He was also the biographer and literary executor of the famous Cambridge economist Nicholas Kaldor. Perhaps his most notable contribution was to show that if long-run balance of payments equilibrium is a requirement for a country, its growth of national income can be approximated by the ratio of the growth of exports to the income elasticity of demand for imports (Thirlwall's Law).