Barnes, Irston R. Papers

Director, Economic Bureau, Civil Aeronautics Board, 1944-1945; Economic Adviser to the Civil Aeronautics Board, 1945-1948; Economist, Federal Trade Commission, 1945-1952

The Irston R. Barnes Papers contain a copy of an unpublished 1948 report, "Airline Financing and the Regulation of Security Issues."

Size: Less than one-half of one linear foot (about 550 pages).
Access: Open.
Copyright: The donor gave to the U.S. government the copyrights in this material and in any other material received by the U.S. government and maintained in a depository administered by the National Archives and Records Administration. Documents created by U.S. government officials in the course of their official duties are in the public domain. Copyright interest in other documents presumably belongs to the creators of those documents, or their heirs.
Processed by: Dennis E. Bilger.
Updated by: Amaya Estes (2026) as part of the Truman Library Internship Program.
Supervising Archivist: Randy Sowell.

Irston Roberts Barnes was born February 14, 1904, in New Haven, Connecticut. He received a Bachelor of Philosophy degree in 1926 and a Doctorate in Economics in 1928, both from Yale University. He was an assistant professor of economics at Yale University from 1932 to 1941, and a professor of political economy at the graduate school of business administration from 1960 to 1963. He also served as the consultant economist in the antitrust division of the Department of Justice from 1941-1944; director of economics bureau, Civil Aeronautics Board, 1944-1945; economics adviser to the Civil Aeronautics Board, 1945-1948; economist, Federal Trade Commission, 1948-1952, 1954-1960; chief division economics evidence, Federal Trade Commission, 1952-1954; professorial lecturer, George Washington University, 1954-1955; visiting lecturer, Columbia Graduate School Business, 1949-1950; and economics consultant in antitrust and government regulation, 1960-1981. He retired in 1981 and passed away on January 19, 1988, at the age of 83.

The first and only series, Subject File, 1948, contains the 1948 report entitled "Airline Financing and the Regulation of Security Issues," written while Barnes was the economic advisor to the Civil Aeronautics Board. The report details the dire financial situations of the contemporary airlines and how to improve their situation through regulation of the securities they issued. The report includes statistics in capitalization of airlines and net income from 1939-1947, stock earnings, and graphs of stock sales.