John Bates Clark was an American economist who lived from 1847 to 1938. He was a professor at Columbia University and is considered one of the most influential economists in American history. Clark's ideas about wages were revolutionary and changed the way economists thought about labor and compensation.
Clark believed that wages were determined by the marginal productivity of labor. This meant that the value of a worker's output determined how much they were paid. If a worker produced more, they would be paid more, and if they produced less, they would be paid less. This was a departure from the prevailing view at the time, which held that wages were determined by supply and demand.
