In Memory of Professor Nick Crafts CBE FBA

Nick passed away peacefully overnight on Friday 6 October. He had served as a Governor of the Institute for many years, following our work with a keen interest and contributing more than half a dozen articles to the National Institute Economic Review, and so we were honoured when he was elected Chair of Council at the Annual General Meeting on 10 December 2020 during the dark days of the cloud of whether there would be Christmas Covid-19 lockdown.

Subsequently we spoke weekly about NIESR, and also the broader economic and social crisis that was becoming apparent as we lurched from shock to shock and the extent of the mire into which we have fallen became increasingly clear. He provided guidance on the many issues we faced over the past three years, with good humour, peppered with examples from his academic experiences at Oxford, Warwick and LSE. He was witty, wise and kind.

Above all, Nick was an astoundingly good academic. After retirement from full-time academe, he became part-time Professor of Economic History at the University of Sussex. He was also an Emeritus Professor of Economic History at the University of Warwick where he had been the founding Director of CAGE, the ESRC Research Centre on Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy from 2010 to 2019. Previously he had held posts at Exeter, Berkeley, Oxford, Leeds and the LSE, where he had been Professor of Economic History from 1995 to 2005.

His research was pored over by generations of economists, as we tried to understand the industrial revolution. His book “British Economic Growth during the Industrial Revolution” was a tour de force. It provided a careful framework for thinking about the timing, scale and impact of industrialisation. His work was widely read not only for the detail of his scholarship but also for its accessibility – and for its relevance to today’s big economic policy challenges.

He was awarded a CBE for services to economics in 2014, was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1992, was a Fellow of the Cliometrics Society and the Economic History Association and is a past President of the Economic History Society. In 2022, he was  President of the Royal Economic Society.

A virtual special issue of Nick Craft’s articles in the National Institute Economic Review has been created, with all articles available for free until the end of 2023.

An online book of condolences has been established by CAGE (University of Warwick), and a tributes page has been created with the British Heart Foundation (Nick’s preferred charity) by the University of Sussex.