Raymond Vernon

Raymond Vernon (September 1, 1913 – August 26, 1999) was an American economist. He was a member of the group that developed the Marshall Plan after World War II and later played a role in the development of the International Monetary Fund and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. He was the Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, becoming emeritus on his retirement. His formulation of the Product life-cycle theory of US exports, first published in 1966, in turn influenced the behavior of companies.

Vernon was born Raymond Visotsky in New York; his parents were Russian Jewish immigrants and he and his siblings changed their family name to Vernon. He earned a BA cum laude from the College of the City of New York in 1933 and a PhD in economics from Columbia University in 1941; all three of his siblings also earned doctorates.

Vernon worked at the Securities and Exchange Commission from 1935 to 1946 and then at the US Department of State, participating in the development and implementation of the Marshall Plan and also helping facilitate the postwar recovery of Japan. He played a role in the development of the International Monetary Fund and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, including negotiating the inclusion of Japan in GATT. In the early 1950s he served as acting director of the Office of Economic Defense and Trade Policy, overseeing US trade with the Soviet bloc and encouraging those countries to trade with non-Communist countries.

He then worked for two years for Mars, heading development of peanut M&M's; he was known in the candy industry as "the man who put the crunch in M & M's".

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