James Alfred Field (May 26, 1880 – July 16, 1927[1]) was an American economist and Professor of Political Economy at the University of Chicago, known as one of the proponents of institutional economics[2] and as demographer, who contributed to the theory of population and its history.

[1] Field was also known as founding president of the Illinois Birth Control League,[5] and associate editor of the Journal of Political Economy, and during World War I was special investigator for the Council of National Defense in its division of statistics.

The solidity of the volume is matched by a felicity of literary presentation rarely found among economic writers; a combination especially refreshing in this day in America when, with growing numbers in our colleges, almost every underpaid professor becomes the hack author of a dull, poorly-written text-book.The range of topics is wide.

[3]And more specific about its content: I have always felt-perhaps there is a personal bias-that Essay III on "The Early Propagandist Movement in English Population Theory" was the best paper Field ever published.

Though Professor Graham Wallas deserves credit also, it is not an ungenerous distinction to say that Field was the first scholar to appraise in full measure Francis Place's efforts for birth control at the beginning of the last century.