Waddill Catchings (September 6, 1879 – December 31, 1967) was an American economist who collaborated with his Harvard classmate William Trufant Foster in a series of economics books that were highly influential in the United States in the 1920s.
The books influenced many policy makers, including Herbert Hoover and Marriner Eccles.
Catchings was a director of major corporations in diverse fields, including leather, motion pictures (Warner Brothers), radio, television, recorded music (Muzak Holdings), tin cans, dry goods, rubber, pharmaceuticals, automobiles (Studebaker and Chrysler), typewriters, breakfast cereals, lumber, mail-order merchandising, music publishing, and electric power.
With Foster, he was one of the leading pre-Keynesian economists, in the underconsumptionist tradition, advocating similar issues to Keynes such as the paradox of thrift and economic interventionism.
The two are now rarely mentioned in contemporary economics texts, standing as they do in the shadow of Keynes's The General Theory.