Robert W. Clower


Robert Wayne Clower was an American economist. He is credited with having largely created the field of stock-flow analysis in economics and with seminal works on the microfoundations of monetary theory and macroeconomics.

Major contributions

Clower is credited with having largely created the field of stock-flow analysis in economics.
In seminal papers that advanced strong methodological positions and set an agenda for subsequent research, Clower formalized and reformulated:
Robert Clower grew up in Pullman, Washington, where he was born on February 13, 1926. His father, F.W. Clower, was a professor of economics there at Washington State College. After high-school graduation, he joined the army, serving thirty-one months before returning to the U.S. where he enrolled at Washington State in the summer of 1946. He received a B.A. degree in Economics there in 1948. When his father became ill in 1948, he was tapped to fill in for his father's classes, in which he had been enrolled after intense earlier reading. He was promoted to Associate Professor upon his father's death for completion of the term and demoted to Instructor in the next term. He received an M.A. degree there in 1949.
Clower continued postgraduate work as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University. There he studied under John R. Hicks and received a B.Litt. degree in 1952. On re-examination, he was awarded a Doctor of Letters degree in 1978.
Subsequent positions as a professor of economics or administrator included:
Other responsibilities included:
Clower was a Fellow of the Econometric Society. He died in 2011 at Columbia, South Carolina.

Selected publications of Robert W. Clower