Professor James W McGilvray, economist and academic; born February 21, 1938, died November 19, 1995
JAMES McGilvray was born in Glasgow in 1938, and educated at Kelvinside Academy and later at St Columba's College near Dublin. He grew up at Huntershill House in Bishopbriggs, earlier the home of Thomas Muir, the exiled reformer; much of his childhood was spent in the company of his mother's family in Ireland.
In 1960 he graduated with honours in economics from Edinburgh University and took up a lectureship at Trinity College, Dublin, where he remained for nine years. Following a year spent at Harvard on a research fellowship, where he worked with the Nobel Laureate Wassilly Leontief, he was appointed as senior lecturer in economics at Stirling University.
In 1975 he and I were appointed to the foundation posts of research director and director respectively, at the newly established Fraser and Allander Institute at Strathclyde University. His first major assignment there was to lead the tripartite team, drawn from IBM, the Scottish Council (Development & Industry), and the Fraser of Allander Institute itself, which in 1979 completed the compilation of the first ever set of input/output tables for Scotland.
Responsibility for the production of these tables on a regular basis has now been adopted by the Government. He was also the founder and first editor of the Institute's Quarterly Economic Commentary, and established the subscription-based Business Forecasting Service.
At the same time he led the institute's team in a development project in Morocco, the first of many such projects he was to lead over the next 15 years in countries ranging from Egypt and Jordan to Angola and Albania. These projects were typically funded by the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, and the European Commission.
In 1985 to 1988 he took leave of absence to direct the economics division of a London-based international consulting company, thereby deepening and widening his experience of the practical application of economics to the problems of developing countries.
Being responsible for the management as well as the technical content of a wide range of collaborative projects stood him in good stead when he returned to Strathclyde University. He became joint director of the university's Overseas Development Services Office, which acts as a link between the university and international development agencies in the provision of research. consultancy, and training services.
From August 1991 to July 1994 he was head of the Department of Economics, and in August 1993 was appointed vice-dean for Research of the Strathclyde Business School Faculty.
A recent assignment from the European Commission to survey the functioning of the official statistical offices in several Eastern European countries, led him to throw his weight behind the proposal to establish a Centre for European Economies in Transition.
As well as all these activities, he found the time to write a number of books on economics and statistics. Only a few days before he died, he completed the preface of a book jointly written with two colleagues on Natural Resources and Environmental Economics.
He leaves behind his wife, Alison, his son and daughter, and his mother, who lives in Dublin, and very many friends throughout the world.
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