Edward Nevin

Edward Thomas Nevin (5 February 1925 – 11 September 1992) was a Welsh/British economist who served as Professor of Economics at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, between 1963 and 1968, and at the University College of Swansea from 1968 to 1992.

Early life and education Nevin left school at age sixteen in 1941 and began working with the Ministry of Aircraft Production in Harrogate. In 1943, he joined the Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME). After his demobilisation in October 1946, he enrolled—under a post-war programme funding ex-servicemen's higher education—at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, to read Law and Economics, graduating with first-class honours in 1949. This cumulated in the 1955 publication The Mechanism of Cheap Money, which demonstrated that the low interest rates that followed the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the collapse of the Gold Standard in 1931, and the War Loan Conversion of 1932 had stimulated economic recovery in Britain during the 1930s.

Nevin returned to Aberystwyth as a lecturer in economics, but in 1957 he was appointed Head of External Finance in the Jamaican Ministry of Finance as part of a team under the island's Finance Minister, the Hon Noel Newton Nethersole.

In 1959, following Nethersole's death at age fifty-five, Nevin returned to Aberystwyth but in 1961 he joined the newly created Irish Economic Research Institute (ERI) in Dublin, where he published fifteen papers on different aspects of the Irish economy, including seven of the first seventeen ERI Research Papers. Many of these examined the potential implications of membership in the European Economic Community for Ireland's economy, setting out the key considerations in "Ireland and the Common Market: Some Basic Issues".

In 1963 Nevin was appointed Professor of Economics at Aberystwyth, and in 1968 he became Head of the Economics Department at University College Swansea giving an inaugural lecture titled "Economics: Waiting for Godot" on 25 February 1969 . During the 1970s and 1980s he acted as adviser to the Police Federation in its pay negotiations with the government; In his obituary in the Independent, Aberystwyth colleague Professor George Clayton observed that Nevin was a man of many exceptional talents who made a distinctive contribution in so many spheres, but I am sure that he would most like to be remembered as a university teacher who conceived of his task as being ‘to open up the mind, to correct it, to refine it, to enable it to know.

Legacy On 5 February 2025, the centenary of Nevin's birth, an event was held at Swansea University to honour him., This featured four presentations Jeff Round on "The First Input–Output Model of the Welsh Economy", and David Blackaby on "Edward Nevin in Swansea during the 1970s and 1980s".

Publications

Edward Nevin, The Market in Gilt-Edged Securities, September 1939-December 1949, A dissertation submitted for the degree of Master of Arts of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, 1950 Edward Nevin, The Problem of the National Debt, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 1954 Edward Nevin (Ed), The Social Accounts of the Welsh Economy 1948-1952, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, Welsh Economic Studies No 1, 1954 Edward Nevin, The mechanism of cheap money : a study of British monetary policy, 1931-1939, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 1955 Edward Nevin (Ed), The Social Accounts of the Welsh Economy 1948-1956, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, Welsh Economic Studies No 2, 1957 Edward Nevin, Textbook of economic analysis, London, Macmillan, 1st edition 1958, 2nd edition 1963, 3rd edition 1967, 4th edition 1976; Irish edition 1965 Edward Nevin, Capital Funds in Underdeveloped Countries: The Role of Financial Institutions, London, Macmillan & Co, 1963 Edward Nevin, The Growth of the Welsh Economy, Denbigh, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1966 Edward Nevin, A.R. Roe, and J.I. Round, The Structure of the Welsh Economy, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 1966, Welsh Economic Studies No 4 Edward Nevin, Waiting for Godot, inaugural lecture at the University College of Swansea, 1969 Edward Nevin and E.W. Davis, The London Clearing Banks, London, Elek Books, 1970 Edward Nevin, Introduction to Microeconomics, London, Croom Helm, 1973 Edward Nevin, The Pay of the Policeman, Police Federation of England and Wales, London, 1975 Edward Nevin, The Economics of Europe, London, Macmillan, 1990