Homan, Paul T. (Paul Thomas), 1893-1969

Paul Thomas Homan (1893-1969) was born in Indianola, Iowa. He took his AB at Willamette College. During 1914-16 and 1919-20 he held a Rhodes Scholarship at the University of Oxford where he gained a BA in 1919. His time at Oxford was interrupted by attachment to the British Expeditionary Force in Mesopotamia and then service with the American Expeditionary Force. He completed a Ph.D. at the Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Government in 1926. Between 1921 and 1923 he was manager of the credit department of the Commonwealth National Bank, Kansas, but thereafter held academic posts: instructor in economics at Washington University, St. Louis (1923-25), Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley (1926-27), Assistant Professor of Economics (1927-29) and Professor (1929-47) at Cornell University. Homan spent three years at Brookings during the 1930s, followed by service with wartime agencies during 1941-47. Between 1947 and 1950 he was on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisors to President Truman and then returned to the University of California as Professor of Economics, from which he retired in 1959. He completed his academic career at Southern Methodist University in 1959-63. He was a pragmatist whose abiding interest was the application of economics to the problems of public policy, and his first book Contemporary economic thought (1928) was followed by four co-authored volumes dealing with topics such as the National recovery Administration, the Puerto Rican sugar economy, and the role of government in economic life. From 1941 to 1952 he was managing editor of the American Economic Review . (For an obituary, see American Economic Review, 60 (1970), 523.)