Edward S. Mason

Nationality

U.S.A.

Date of Birth

1899

Date of Death

1992

Political
Preference

Edward S. Mason was an American economist and professor of economics at Harvard University. Born in Clinton, Iowa, he earned his PhD in economics at Harvard University in 1925 and taught courses on the history of socialism there in the 1920s and 1930s. During the Second World War, Mason worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a U.S. wartime intelligence agency.

After the war, Mason enrolled in the work of the U.S. Department of State, where he concerned himself with economic planning, the formation of the United Nations and the implementation of the Marshall Plan. He served as the chief economic advisor to George C. Marshall on the Foreign Ministers Conference in Moscow in 1947. After Marshall came back disillusioned about the prospects of cooperation with the Soviet Union, he made a generous offer of economic aid to Europe. In order to study the economic implications of this on the U.S. economy, Mason was asked to cooperation in the work of the President’s Committee on Foreign Aid, chaired by Averell Harriman, which would make recommendations on this matter to the President.