Ira Brown Cross

Ira Brown Cross was an American Institutionalist labor economist.

Cross was born in 1880 in Decatur, Illinois, a descendent of New England pilgrims.  Ira B. Cross received his B.A. and MA. from Wisconsin in 1905/06 under the Institutionalist giant John R. Commons.  While still a student, Cross became politically active,  serving on the Wisconsin Tax Commission in 1905 and joining the Socialist Party in 1906. 

Cross received his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1909.  Cross stayed on as professor at Stanford until 1914, when he moved across the bay to join the University of California Berkeley, becoming full professor in 1919.

Although best known as a labor economist, especially his monumental 1935 treatise, Ira Cross also taught money and banking courses at Berkeley until his retirement in 1951.

Cross died in 1977.