Charles Francis Bastable, FBA (1855–1945) was an Irish economist.
[1] The son of a priest, he studied at Trinity College, Dublin from 1873 to 1878, graduating with a first-class BA in history and political science.
After graduating, Bastable considered a legal career and was called to the bar in Ireland in 1881, but the following year he successfully sat the five-yearly examination for the Whatley Professorship and during his tenure the statutes were altered allowing him to be re-elected without examination.
Bastable made significant contributions to theories of international trade and finance.
He was a founding member of the Royal Economic Society and in 1915 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, the United Kingdom's national academy for the social sciences.