Ronald Edsel Findlay (April 12, 1935 – October 8, 2021)^[2] was an economist and trade theorist. He served as the Ragnar Nurkse Professor of Economics at Columbia University.

He was born in 1935 in Rangoon, then in British Burma.^[2] He and his family fled on foot from Burma to India during World War II.^[3]

He received a BA from Rangoon University in 1954, and a PhD from MIT in 1960, where his doctoral dissertation was supervised by Robert Solow.^[4] He began his career as an economist at Rangoon University, first as a tutor (1954–57), then as a lecturer (1960–66), and finally as a research professor (1966–68).^[5]

He joined Columbia in 1969, initially as a visiting professor, before being appointed a professor in 1970. His research focused on international trade and economic development, and he took what has been described as a perspective centred around political economy.^[5] He helped theorise the North-South model of international trade.^[6] He became a U.S. citizen in 1976.^[7]

Selected publications include:

• with Kevin H. O'Rourke, 2007, "Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium", Princeton University Press
• with Ronald W. Jones, 2001, "Input Trade and the Location of Production", The American Economic Review
• 1996 "Modeling Global Interdependence: Centers, Peripheries, and Frontiers", The American Economic Review
• with Richard Clarida, 1992, "Government, Trade, and Comparative Advantage", The American Economic Review (1992);
• 1992 "The Roots of Divergence: Western Economic History in Comparative Perspective", The American Economic Review
• with Stanislaw Wellisz, 1988, "The State and the Invisible Hand", World Bank Research Observer
• 1984 "Trade and Development: Theory and Asian Experience", Asian Development Review, Vol 2, No. 2
• An "Austrian" Model of International Trade and Interest Rate Equalization, in Journal of Political Economy

• North–South model