Fred Rogers Fairchild

Fred Rogers Fairchild (August 5, 1877 – April 13, 1966) was an American economist and educator.[1]

Fairchild was born in Crete, Nebraska. His father was Arthur Babbitt Fairchild, a descendant of Thomas Fairchild, who settled in New England in 1639. He was a brother of Henry Pratt Fairchild, a sociologist and educator. Fairchild attended Doane College (AB, 1898) in Crete and Yale University (PhD, 1904). He also received an honorary LL.D. from Doane in 1929.[2] Fairchild taught economics at Yale for many years.[3] He was a holder of the Knox Chair of Economics.[4] He was published widely, and his work included well received textbooks.[5][6]

Fairchild was an honorary member of the National Tax Association, an educational association of taxation experts.[7] His primary field of study was federal taxation in the United States. In a 1920 journal article published in the American Economic Review,[8] Fairchild proposed a restructuring of the post-war U.S. federal taxation system in light of calls for the repeal of the excess profits tax enacted during wartime. He recommended, in order to ensure a "reasonable revenue to the government and justice to the various classes of taxpayers",[9] that corporations be exempt from income taxes and instead that shareholder dividends become subject to the income tax.