Milton Gilbert (1909 – September 28 or 29, 1979) was an economist and finance expert who worked at the United States Department of Commerce, Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) and Bank for International Settlements.
[5]: 27–28 Gilbert's view on the inclusion of government in GDP was heavily influenced by his cousin, the Keynesian economist and Harvard teacher Richard Gilbert, the director of the Defense Economic Section of the Office of Price Administration and Civilian Supply (OPACS),[4]: 93 where he saw firsthand the effect of Kuznets' GDP definition: a request for additional government spending by OPACS in 1941 was denied on the grounds that it would not increase national income.
[4]: 109 [6]: 33–35 While at the U.S. Department of Commerce, Gilbert co-edited a volume of Studies in Income and Wealth (a book series) with Dorothy Brady and Kuznets.
[7] From 1951 to 1960, Gilbert worked as an economist at the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) in Paris,[2][3] which would be renamed in 1961 to OECD (its present name).
[9] This work was an early precursor to the International Comparison Program that would be created in 1968 at the University of Pennsylvania[5]: 65 [9][11] which in turn would lead to Real GDP Per Capita for More Than One Hundred Countries by Kravis, Alan W. Heston and Robert Summers in 1978, the first version of the Penn World Table.