Harvard Economist Dead at Age of 83

Richard V. Gilbert, an economist known for his advisory work for President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration and for his volunteer economic work in Pakistan, died this Sunday of complications following cancer. He was 83.

Gilbert, who received his doctorate from Harvard in 1930, was described yesterday by longtime friend and teacher Lamont University Professor Emeritus Edward S. Mason, as "a first rate economist who was very intense and forceful in applying his philosophies."

After receiving his Ph.D., Gilbert entered the ranks of the Roosevelt administration as an economic adviser to Harry Hopkins, one of the principal architects of the New Deal. Gilbert went on to become chief economist and director of research for Roosevelt's Office of Price Administration. Economist Walter Salant, of the Brookings Institute in Washington, called Gilbert "the outstanding, unsung hero of American wartime economic policy."

Professor David E. Bell, Clarence James Professor of Population Sciences and International Health, remembers Gilbert as "a very gentle man with ideas that were forceful and radical for their time.

During the New Deal, Gilbert was one of the first economists to focus his attention on the economies of developing nations.

Following the war, Gilbert remained in Washington as an independent consulting economist and subsequently joined Schenley Industries, his former client.

In 1959, Gilbert joined the Harvard Economic Advisory Service (HEAS) with hopes of putting his economic philosophies into practice. As director of the HEAS mission in Pakistan, Gilbert reformed the Pakistani economy by instituting a policy of shipping surplus U.S. grain to the developing country.

Gustav F. Papanek, chairman of the Economics Department at Boston University and close colleague of Gilbert, said that "Gilbert had as much an impact on the economic development of Pakistan during that time as any foreigner bar none."

Gilbert is survived by his wife, the former Emma Cohen; his two sons, Walter Gilbert '53, a Nobel Laureate and fellow in microbiology here, and Alan Gilbert, a professor of international studies at the University of Denver; his daughter, Joanne Schwartzberg of Chicago; and six grandchildren.