Contributions
Throughout his career Clark was concerned with the dynamics of a market economy, or Competition as a Dynamic Process, the title of his last work. In Studies in the Economics of Overhead Costs, Clark developed his theory of the acceleration principle, that investment demand can fluctuate widely when consumer demand fluctuates; in this he anticipated key Keynesian theories of investment and business cycles. This work is also considered a major conceptual contribution in the field of cost accounting. Clark is considered one of the founders of the theory of workable competition, neither pure competition nor pure monopoly, a neglected Marshallian insight.
With his theory of X-efficiency, Harvey Leibenstein demonstrated that the measurability of the market price of products in a monopoly is very difficult to obtain.
John Maurice Clark was the son of John Bates Clark, and shared his view of the importance of ethical and policy issues. Both father and son worked jointly on the revision of John Bates Clark's The Control of Trusts (1914), work continued by John Maurice in Social Control of Business (1926, revised in 1939).
Clark was President of the American Economic Association in 1935, and was awarded the Francis A. Walker Medal in 1952 (the highest honor of the AEA).
Clark died, aged 78, in West Haven, Connecticut.
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