Professor Alan Peacock

Sir Alan Turner Peacock DSC, FBA, FRSE (26 June 1922 – 2 August 2014) was a British economist.

He taught at the University of St Andrews, the London School of Economics (where he also conducted the LSE Orchestra), the University of Edinburgh's School of Economics, the University of York (where he founded the Department of Economics), the University of Buckingham of which he was the Vice-Chancellor from 1980 to 1984, and finally at Heriot-Watt University where he was honorary professor of public finance at the Edinburgh Business School until his death.

He was from 1973 to 1976 the Chief Economic Adviser to the Department of Trade and Industry of the United Kingdom. He was also a co-founder and the first Executive Director of the David Hume Institute. During the 1970s and 1980s, he played a leading role in the field of cultural economics.

From 1984 to 1986 Peacock served as Chairman of the Committee on the Financing of the BBC (Peacock Committee), the tenth major British inquiry into broadcasting. The Committee rejected Margaret Thatcher's wish to fund the BBC by advertising and proposed a sophisticated long-term strategy in which given a full broadcasting market with unlimited channels and freedom of entry, subscription would replace the licence fee. The model developed by Peacock later on served as a blueprint for Ofcom's Public Service Publisher.

He was a Fellow of the British Academy, the Accademia dei Lincei, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and was in addition an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Economic Affairs. He was a recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross for his intelligence work in the Arctic Ocean during World War II and was knighted in 1987.

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