Lord Desai obituary
Economist who reassessed Karl Marx’s view of the durability of capitalism and wrote on Indian culture and history
An economist with a strong grasp of politics, Meghnad Desai, who has died aged 85, put telling the truth ahead of the pursuit of personal ambition. His work as professor at the London School of Economics had the wide perspective that came from his Indian heritage, and his interest in Labour politics led to him becoming an active member of the House of Lords.
The first of his books, Marxian Economic Theory, was published in 1973. I was one of his many students who benefited from the use of his book Applied Econometrics (1976). Testing Monetarism (1981) predicted the demise of the money-supply targeting that was then being pursued by Margaret Thatcher’s government.