William Diebold, 84; Free Trade Economist
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William Diebold, 84, an economist who helped mold economic policy based on free trade after World War II, died April 2 in Upper Nyack, N.Y., of congestive heart failure.
Diebold, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations for more than five decades, was a strong supporter of the postwar Bretton Woods economic system that emphasized free trade. As a member of the council’s war and peace studies program and through the Office of Strategic Services, he exercised major influence with government policymakers.
An orthodox liberal economist educated at Swarthmore, Yale and the London School of Economics, Diebold wrote numerous books on economic issues. Among them were “New Directions in Our Trade Policy” in 1941, “Trade and Payments in Western Europe” in 1952 and “Industrial Policy as an International Issue” in 1980.
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