Nicholas Kaldor was born on 12 May 1908 in Budapest, the son of Julius Kaldor (a Hungarian lawyer) and his wife Joan. He went to school at the Model Gymnasium, Budapest, then studied economics at the University of Berlin, at the same time working as foreign correspondent for a Hungarian newspaper. After a short course at the London School of Economics he enrolled for the BSc course, graduating in 1930 and becoming assistant lecturer and then lecturer by 1938. Kaldor married Clarisse Elisabeth Goldschmidt in 1934, and when the LSE was evacuated during the war they moved to Cambridge. Between 1943 and 1945 Kaldor worked for the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, and in 1947 he resigned from the LSE to become Director of Research and Planning at the Economic Commission of Europe in Geneva. He was elected to a Fellowship at King’s and offered a lectureship in the Economics Faculty of the University in 1949. He became a Reader in Economics in 1952, and Professor in 1966. Kaldor advised the United Nations, the British Labour government and several other governments on economic policy. His work covered taxation, growth, war and reconstruction, monetarism and equilibrium theory. He was awarded a peerage in 1974 as Lord Kaldor of Newnham in the City of Cambridge. Kaldor retired from his Professorship in 1975 but continued to lecture and provide advice on economic matters until shortly before his death on 1 October 1986.

For biographical details of Nicholas Kaldor, the reader is referred to the following published works: 'Cambridge Journal of Economics' Nicholas Kaldor memorial issue, Vol. 13, No. 1, March 1989. G. C. Harcourt: 'Nicholas Kaldor, 12 May 1908 - 30 September 1986', in 'Economica' 55, May 1988, pp. 159-70. N. Kaldor: 'Recollections of an economist' in 'Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review' no. 156,Mar. 1986. 'King's College Annual Report', Oct. 1988, pp. 23-27. F. Targetti: 'Nicholas Kaldor: the economics and politics of capitalism as a dynamic system' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). This includes a bibliography. A. P. Thirlwall: 'Nicholas Kaldor' (New York: New York University Press, 1987). This includes a bibliography. A. P. Thirlwall: 'Nicholas Kaldor 1908-1986' in 'Proceedings of the British Academy' LXXIII, 1987, pp. 517-66.