John Bradshaw Wood was born 1 August 1924 in Parbold, Lancashire. He was educated at Oundle School, at New College, Oxford and then at Cambridge. His early career was varied and included work in the economic section of the War Cabinet Secretariat, the Manchester Guardian, the merchant bank Lazard's; Conservative Central Office, the position of advisor to Lord Chandos (at Associated Electrical Industries) and speech-writer for Anthony Eden. In 1957 the Institute of Economic Affairs was founded and Wood became Deputy Director in 1969. The Institute "was a tide against the age…a reaction against the tide of the centrally-planned economy and its widespread acceptance in Britain" (taken from Wood's obituary in The Times 26 August 1991). The Institute published large numbers of publications on the way markets worked and how they could be used to maximise economic and social returns and "laid the foundation for the liberal economic policies pursued two decades later in the 1980s and beyond".

Wood's publications include How much unemployment? (1972); How much inequality? (1974) and What Price Unemployment? (1982). Wood died on August 21 1991.