John Bates Clark (1847-1938) was an American neo-classical economist. He was one of the pioneers of the marginalist revolution and opponent to the Institutionalist school of economics, and spent most of his career teaching at Columbia University. Early in his career Clark's writings reflected his German Socialist background and showed him as a critic of capitalism. He is better known for his use of marginal productivity to help explain the distribution of income. His works include: The Philosophy of Wealth (1886), Essentials of Economic Theory (1907) and The Distribution of Wealth: A Theory of Wages, Interest and Profits (1908).